Lightning Crashes
by chrissie0707
Summary: Preseries. It's been two years since the brothers have spoken, but several freak accidents on the Stanford campus have a rusty and out of the game Sam calling the one person he knows will always come through for him. Drama, banter, whump.
1. Chapter 1

Preseries, dovetailing off of the misstep in the pilot that the bros hadn't seen each other in TWO years as opposed to FOUR. Sam calls Dean to Stanford for help with some crazy shit going on.

* * *

_Lightning Crashes_

"_The reason lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place is that the same place isn't there the second time."_

_Willie Tyler_

Chapter One

"_You know, in almost two years I've never bothered you. Never asked you for a thing."_

_Fairfax, Oklahoma, Spring 1999_

"Sammy! Get down!"

_SAM. For the freaking millionth time, my name is SA– _Mid-stride, Sam dropped the duffle and then himself, chest thudding against the packed dirt of the graveyard before the words were even fully out of his father's mouth, bracing the fall with flattened palms. He wasn't seven, despite the way his dad insisted on talking to him, and he was well past the point where the loud discharge of the lead-loaded shotgun startled him. But the resulting pieces of exploded gravestone flew past just a skosh too close for comfort. He ground his face harder against the dirt, small rocks digging into his right cheek, and threw his hands over his shaggy hair.

There was an aggravated sigh, a metallic thunk as the discarded gun hit the ground. "Damn it, Sam, I said 'get down!'"

Sam brought his hands away and lifted his head into the cloud of gritty gravestone dust the three inches necessary to glare at his father. "Where do you think I am?" The look he received in return told him in no uncertain terms that, hunt or no hunt, a fight was there if he was really looking for it.

"Really not the time, guys." Sam was assaulted with a second shower of stone as another corner of the marker behind him exploded. Dean came charging into the clearing and there was just enough time for Sam to admire how he took up a stance and made the shot without breaking stride before he was pissed at his brother for how close that same shot came to his head. It was just as much a warning shot to Sam as it was to the spirit, stopping the inevitable fight before it started. Dean would never come seriously close to shooting him, but sometimes he sure liked to make Sam think he would.

Dean flung his right arm out, chucking his gun across the clearing and over Sam's head to their father. He raised his eyebrows at Sam expectantly, awaiting the reload that was apparently too slow in coming. Even gave an exasperated wag of his fingers. So Sam sat up, ripped yet another loaded gun from the duffle at his feet, and threw it at Dean's face instead of his hands.

With reflexes any cat would kill for, Dean caught the gun by the barrel before it was anywhere near smashing into his face, but the action still earned a harsh "Samuel" from across the clearing, which Sam added to the running tally in his head. To be fair to all parties involved, he kept two columns: deserved and undeserved. Chocking this instance up to the fact that this particular spirit had been running the three Winchesters ragged for the better part of the last three hours and everyone's fuses were burned a little short, Sam put this mark in the undeservedcolumn.

Said spirit was currently grinning at Sam from less than twenty feet away, having accurately assessed him as the lesser threat, a weird and unanticipated energy field crackling around it. Despite the slightest raise of Dean's eyebrows, the other Winchesters seemingly remained unfazed by this turn of events. Sam, on the other hand, was decidedly not.

"Dad?" Sam pushed up off of his knees and set himself like a runner awaiting the starting gun. Because that's what he did: sprinted out of the way and let Dad and Dean handle it, the many 'its' they came across in their line of…work. Both men raised their weapons, but the spook's black eyes twinkled mischievously and it vanished into the breeze before either could squeeze the trigger.

"Dad?" Dean echoed Sam's uneasiness and brought his gun down; but not before John, of course.

"Yeah, Dean. I don't know."

Sam pulled himself to his feet just as a piercing scream broke the night's silence. John was off in a flash with Dean at his heels. The two were out of sight within seconds, neither having spared a glance at each other or even at Sam, to see if he was behind them. Sam was in no hurry. They were more than capable of handling a single spirit without him dragging his ass on the sidelines; didn't need him at all, really. He'd heard he was more of a hindrance than a help on more than one occasion. Usually after a botched hunt, seething and stewing on the receiving end of a lecture as he cleaned and patched wounds he liked to think of as karma. Sam bent to pointlessly brush the dirt and graveyard grime from the knees of his perpetually dingy jeans, rolling his eyes at the nighttime screamer. _What person in their right mind is in a cemetery at eleven o' friggin' clock at night?_ And then he paused because, _oh, right . _Because while his friends were home watching _The Late Show_ or sneaking out to Ricky Tillman's _very_ un-chaperoned party, or maybe even getting a head start writing their US History term papers – this was what Sam was doing. Tossing reloads and ducking out of the way when the spirit his family was hunting – and just how many things were wrong with _that_ sentence – decided to hover his creepy shit over in Sam's direction.

This particular ghost wasn't the reason they had migrated in the direction of this quaint, monochromatic little town in the middle of Oklahoma, but a few months into their stay the opportunity had presented itself and well, John Winchester hadn't ever been one to turn down a good hunt. Dean, he just did whatever Dad told him to. Sam didn't know much of the details about the ghost, just that he had been hurting people, and that was enough to get Sam to feel a little less bitter about being dragged along that night. Whatever small part he played in this completely whacked-out, avenging-family-on-a-mission-to-rid-the-world-of-evil dynamic they had going; he did it to help people.

Dad and Dean? It was about helping people, sure, but also about so much more. They really got into it on what Sam was lately considering to be unhealthy levels. Illegal levels. The past couple of weeks, while Sam was worrying about finals and how stupid he'd look if he actually worked up the nerve to ask Melissa Greer to the spring formal, the other two-thirds of the Army Winchester had been flashing fake IDs all over town. There was a lot of stuff they didn't talk to Sam about, but from what he had gathered between chapters nine and ten of his calculus textbook, they were pulling the ol' reporter routine.

Yes. His twenty-year-old brother was _totally_ believable as a college-educated newspaper reporter. As it turned out, he was. It seemed Sam was the only one not buying it.

He stooped to retrieve the weapons duffle – _what am I, a freakin' pack mule? – _and shouldered it, turning towards the same worn path his father and brother had shot down. He was a little tired and truth be told, a little bored, so he took his sweet time, absently picking small pieces of twig from his tee. A shout and twin shotgun blasts changed his attitude and pace dramatically. With the loud crack of the guns, Sam hoofed it through the saplings and brush, slapping branches out his face, 'tired' and 'bored' two of the farthest things from his mind. At the forefront were 'Dean' and 'Dad.'

He broke through a thin wall of dry, scratchy bushes that snagged at his shirt and he stumbled to a halt, tangled in spiny branches and winded from the sprint. The sight before him stole immediately what little breath Sam had left. "Dean!"

John shot him a glare from where he stood a few feet away, his eyes barely meeting Sam's before darting back to the spirit, his gaze parallel with the barrel of his gun. It would seem Sam wasn't allowed to be loud and distracting to his father when his brother was slumped at the base of a tombstone, boneless and not moving with what could only be seen by Sam's eyes as a _river_ of blood running down the side of his face. His dad didn't even seem to notice.

Sam wriggled violently to untangle himself and the weapons duffle so he could get to his brother. He pulled free, lurching forward from the bushes with the _rip _of his second-favorite tee. He hopped a few steps before righting himself and moved in Dean's direction. He was immediately stopped with a barked, "Sam, don't move!"

_Damn it, Dad. _"But Dean – "

"– is fine. Just took his eyes off the damn thing." It was a warning and a reprimand. A 'Sammy, please. Just shut up, let me take care of this, and don't get yourself killed.' John was not going to make the same mistake his son had.

Dean's gun was inches from his limp hand, on the side of the ghost currently off-limits, so Sam dropped the duffle to the ground and crouched next to it, rifling quickly through, trying to remember how many guns had been brought along. Surely they'd packed enough for Sam to grab one if he really needed to, and he was certainly feeling like he really needed to. His fingers closed on the grip of a handgun and he pulled it out without thinking, whirling to give his dad some back up, hoping it was one he knew how to use.

John's shoulder dropped – barely perceptible. "Sam, just…just stay back."

Sam made a show of pulling back the hammer and bringing the gun up, stepping closer to his father.

A quiet growl came from deep in John's throat. Sam was very familiar with this growl. The ghost, as if sensing the tension and feeling the need to take advantage of it, glided just a few feet to the left, closer to where Dean was splayed, yet to twitch a muscle.

Definitely the wrong move to make. The spirit dissipated into a million little spirit-y pieces in the explosion that cracked from the gun in John's hands. It wouldn't last long, but it bought them a little more time, enough to get Dean out of the way.

Sam crossed the distance between Dean and himself in a few strides and was crouching and gently shaking his brother when he felt the shadow of his father fall over them. He looked up at his dad, who narrowed his eyes and spoke to Sam, but his gaze never left Dean's unmoving form; specifically, the side of his face that was literally blood-red.

"You know where the bastard's grave is?"

Sam squinted and gestured vaguely to the area behind John. "Yeah. It's on the other side of the cemetery, I told you –"

"Help your brother back to the car." John took the gun from Sam's hand, put the safety back on, and tossed it into the duffle. Sam hadn't even realized he was still holding it. John paused for a moment, staring into the bag, and looked back at Sam, his eyes dark, expression unreadable. "And just what were you hoping to accomplish with little bullets like these, Sam?"

Sam ignored him, equal parts embarrassed and indignant, and glanced around at the surrounding grave markers. "Where's the victim?"

"Who?"

"The scream. The person it attacked."

John's eyes drifted back down to Dean. "There was no victim. It was just a lure." He gripped the duffle's straps and started in the direction Sam had pointed.

Sam swallowed, and for a second, he was almost sympathetic towards his dad, regretful of his own constant animosity.

But John stopped and turned, eyes dark and flickering between Sam and the contents of the duffle in his hands. And like he just couldn't help himself: "Where's my shotgun, Sam? Don't tell me you left it back in the clearing. What have I told you about leaving things behind?"

* * *

_Stanford University_

_Palo Alto, California, Fall 2003_

Rachel wasn't one hundred percent sure what woke her up, why her eyes snapped open from the sweet bliss of a chance encounter with Brad Pitt in Paris to wide-a-fucking-wake, but she had a preeetty good idea. And it did not make her happy.

She rolled to her left and pried open one eye to verify the time on the alarm clock on her bedside table before she proceeded in flipping her lid. It took a couple of blinks to rid her eyes of the blur of sleep. Two goddamn twenty-seven in the morning. _I hate her._ Third time that week, and it was definitely a lid-flipping circumstance.

Rachel shifted onto her back with an angry groan, dinner (and dessert) with Brad becoming more distant and gauzy by the second. Maybe next time. "Stacey, I told you not to wake me up if you and Josh came back here. I have an eight o'clock class, loser." She'd woken in the middle of the night and interrupted her roommate and boyfriend more than once. However, she most certainly felt that _she _was the one whose privacy was being violated, not the other way around, and very much justified in feeling so. "Get a room," she muttered. _One that isn't mine._

But the room seemed quiet now; no apparent reason for such a rude disruption of her precious sleep. Rachel pulled herself from the comfort of her pillow up on her elbows and squinted across the dorm room, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. After a few moments, the faint glow of moonlight through a crack in the curtains revealed that Stacey's bed was empty, still made from the previous morning.

Rachel frowned. _Then what the hell…_

She heard it again then and immediately knew something wasn't right, in that creepy way that makes it so hard to fall sleep after staying up to watch a scary movie, no matter how NOT REAL you know it was. A hissing, coming from somewhere across the room near the door, amplified and demanding attention in the quiet room. Radiator? Not in a million years; dormitory radiators clanked and banged, they didn't hiss, and besides, theirs was on the opposite side of the room, under the window.

_Hss._

It almost sounded like a…like a snake. Like a lot of them, actually. It wasn't, obviously, because that was a completely _ludicrous _thought, and it was just your run-of-the-mill-wakes-you-in-the-middle-of-the-night sound and she was just awake-in-the-middle-of-the-night-for-no-reason tired and out of it, and was SO going to kick Stacey's ass in the morning for not being there.

_Hssss._

But if that was true, then what was that chill running down her spine? Rachel scooted up in her bed, eyes wide and roaming over the various black blobs of the room's landscape. If there was anything in the world she was terrified of, it was snakes, and there was no mistaking that sound. Her little brothers had been tormenting her for years, and she avoided Animal Planet like it carried the plague. _Fucking crazy crocodile hunter_. No, she knew that sound.

The light switch was all the way across the room, and there was no fucking way she was putting her bare feet on the floor in the dark, no matter how much of a baby that might make her.

_Hss. Hssss._

Definitely no fucking way. Not with noises like that being made in the room. Maybe she was just having a nightmare. A really, really _vivid _nightmare. One she was aware she was having. Rachel swallowed and pinched her arm, feeling stupid and about five years old, but she didn't wake up any more than she already was, and the hissing didn't stop. Rachel groped on her nightstand for her cell phone, honest to God wishing Stacey and her annoying as hell boyfriend were canoodling across the room and that was all she had to deal with.

She flipped the phone open and held it away at arm's length, sweeping it from side to side like an improvised flashlight. It took her about thirty full seconds to realize it didn't really do any good unless her eyes were open.

She pried the right one open first. A soft blue glow illuminated three feet of the room at a time, and another creepy hiss had Rachel's arm trembling as her eyelids slammed shut again.

"Stupid, stupid, stupid," she chanted to herself in a whisper. "You're so fucking stupid." _You're going to feel like such a retard in the morning…_

She opened her eyes just as the light hit the floor in front of the door, near the foot of her bed, and Rachel screamed.

* * *

_Des Moines, Iowa, two weeks later, Sunday_

"Son of a bitch!"

Dean dove to the ground as the wall behind him detonated in a shower of plaster dust and chunked drywall, little pieces raining down like drab, matte confetti. He crashed to the floor, his gun slipping out of his grip and clattering across the concrete to be lost in a shadowy corner of the warehouse.

He pushed himself up and scrubbed quickly at his grainy eyes, coughing a couple times at the rough dustiness coating his tongue. He spit a grainy glob of saliva to the side and cast a quick look around the corner of the stacked boxes he was using as cover, all the while keeping his crouched position. "Oh, you son of a bitch," he muttered, rubbing his shoulder.

But Dean didn't have time to sit and lick his wounds and feel sorry for himself; he had to move fast, because this thing was nasty and he was hunting alone. Once upon a time, he would have had backup. Hell, he would have _been_ the backup. Hunting alone was just another something he had gotten used to. Hadn't had a choice.

John had given him a quick rundown of the situation and two days to take care of it and meet him in Richmond: a poltergeist was terrorizing nightshift workers at a packaging warehouse on the outskirts of Des Moines. Considering the drive was sixteen hours at best, Dean wondered if his dad had figured travel time into this, and decided no, probably not. Two days was "more than enough time." Not that it would have been up for debate if it wasn't.

"_You've done this a dozen times, Dean. I think two days is pretty generous."_

Yeah, it would have been – if the freakin' thing was actually nothing more than a mischievous spirit just dicking around for shits and giggles.

Dean had no idea what this thing was, but it sure as hell was no poltergeist. A poltergeist Dean knew what to do with; could be ten years younger and _asleep _and know what to do with it. _This_ thing was all pointy teeth and fiery eyes and making things explode and Dean was just about _done_ with this hunt. Was suddenly really pissed at his dad for not having more, or at least better, information for him. It was really unlike him…unless it was one of those 'Dean'll figure it out' kind of hunts that Bobby had hinted about the last time he'd seen him.

John Winchester had been on some kind of super-hunter kick over the last couple of months – the last couple of _years_, actually – and was dragging Dean right along with him. Ever since Sam had taken off it was just one hunt after another. No stops, no breaks; not for more than minor injury recovery time, and even those were hurried. John had still had a hell of a limp when they left Greenburg. Over the past few months, he was sending Dean to hunt alone more often and was checking in less and less. These hunts usually came in the form of John either sending him off with a clipped description, or just flat-out leaving him behind to go off on his own hunt, calling a few days later with a separate job for him. Such was this instance.

There wasn't a whole hell of a lot he could sleep through, but his dad was one stealthy bastard, and Dean had woken two days earlier to an otherwise empty motel room. No note, no explanation, just the smaller of their two weapons duffels by the door and the assumption Dean had enough cash to cover the bill. He didn't, but he could get it quick at the bar a few blocks over. Days like that used to drive him crazy. But now, it was just the way things were. He knew his dad had his reasons, and if there was something going down Dean needed to be involved in, he would be. He was pretty sure. Like ninety percent sure.

Dean went to swallow and gagged at the plaster dust still in his mouth. He spat again and made a face at his gun, or, rather, in the general direction of where he thought his gun might be. He'd managed to fire off one of the barrels rather ineffectively, but hoped another well-placed round of rock salt might at least buy him enough time to get his ass out of the building and regroup. He had an entire fucking arsenal in the trunk of the car, and if he could just get out there –

A fire extinguisher case mounted on the wall over his head suddenly shattered, sending glass shards of every shape and size exploding outwards all over Dean. He flung his hands over his head and threw his body against the wall, putting himself behind as much of the cascade of broken glass as he could.

When the shards had all clinked to the floor, he lowered cut, stinging hands and popped his head around the edge of the packing crate. "Alright, already!"

* * *

_Stanford University, Monday_

Sam was sure Professor Nagle was lecturing about something important. In the very least, something he should be paying some sort of attention to. It was twenty minutes into the class, the tweedy little dwarf of a man was really starting to get into it, and the third and most difficult exam of the semester was next Monday, and he still had a lot of recopied notes to highlight. Sam was a diligent student; he was part of that small, elite group who actually read _and _took notes over assigned readings, every one of them, and was keeping a steady A average. Three and a half semesters into his college career and he was maintaining that coveted 4.0. Sam paid attention, and averaged about five pages of notes per class regardless of the subject matter or actual length of the professor's lecture.

In short, most of his fellow students hated him. Especially if there was a curve.

But today, Sam hadn't even written down the date, let alone a single word of the day's lecture. He couldn't tear his eyes away from the newspaper article resting on top of his unopened notebook, but he wasn't really reading it. Didn't need to; he practically had it memorized by then, had read it over and over since he'd first picked up the _Daily _that morning. There were more hastily ripped-out articles tucked away inside his book bag.

It was the third "freak accident" of the past ten days. Freshman Rachel Spitzer last week, and then the two sophomores; Darrell Davis over the weekend, and now Nicole Fox. All three had been students. No one had died, but the things that were happening were just…freaky, on a level that Sam often wished he didn't know existed.

The night before, in Owen Hall, Nicole had apparently been found shrieking and running from the sixth floor showers, clinging to the towel she had grabbed to cover herself. She claimed the drain had backed up, the door had jammed, and she'd been stuck there to drown in steaming hot shower water, screaming for nearly twenty minutes before she was finally heard. The thing was; she hadn't been alone in the showers. The other two sophomore girls who had been there at the time swore up, down, and sideways they hadn't known she was there, hadn't known she was in trouble, and it wasn't a prank. They didn't even know Nicole any more than seeing her every now and then on the floor.

Sam had clipped the newspaper articles, the ones from both _The Stanford Daily_ and the _Palo Alto Daily News, _and put all of the clippings in a notebook he wasn't using anymore, stuffed between pages of old psych 101 notes. He wasn't really sure why he had done it, but news of the accidents had jumped out at him with waving arms, shouting 'something about me isn't right!' Try as he might to forget, Sam had spent his entire life being educated firsthand about how dangerous it was to ignore these types of things.

Of course something about it wasn't right. It wasn't normal to wake up with dozens of hissing snakes in your dorm room only to find the room empty when you made it to the light switch. People would have just laughed it off and thought Rachel Spitzer had just had a very vivid nightmare, if not for the bite on her ankle.

A bite from a phantom snake was one thing, but the documented marks on Darrell Davis's body were something completely different. Sam had only seen the one picture that had been released to journalists, the one that had been on the evening news on Saturday, but it had been enough. Second degree burns? From a fire no one else said existed? Yes, some _very_ weird things were going on.

Sam had years and years of training under his belt. He knew when something was up and when that something was not of the realm of the natural. He knew there was something very wrong when someone was burned in a fire that no one else could see, bitten by snakes that weren't really there.

And about what had happened to Nicole? Sam wasn't used to having more questions than he had answers and despite how very much he hated it – he needed the answers. He had spent all week wondering what there was _he _could do about it. The answer was, disappointingly, not a whole hell of a lot.

Sam had a class with Nicole, and it was just days after the incident when he was sitting in his front-row seat in Stats gazing across the room at the petite girl, pale and jumpy three days after the incident and rubbing at pink, sensitive skin that had clearly been scalded. He had pulled the clipping out of his notebook again, and spent the rest of the hour reading and rereading and staining the tip of his yellow highlighter with cheap black ink.

He wasn't sure why.

Later that afternoon, Sam was walking in front of the Union when snippets of a hushed conversation hit his ears.

"The girl's a fucking nutcase. I was there, and – "

"You were there?"

"Will you let me tell my fucking story?"

"Sorry. God."

"I was studying, had the door open, and then she just comes running out of the showers and down the hall screaming about the bathroom being, like, haunted."

"You go in there?"

"Are you kidding me? I'm showering on the fifth floor."

"How's Nicole?"

"A goddamn mess. She's still loony."

And so here he was, spacing out during his classes. Sam knew he couldn't just sit back and wait for things to get worse. He was going to get proactive, no matter how much he didn't want to. He hated to admit to himself that he knew this was probably about more than an influx of "fucking nutcases" on the Stanford campus.

* * *

_Tuesday_

"Sam? I think this is turning into something of an unhealthy obsession."

Sam snorted as his roommate entered the room, not taking his eyes from the spread before him. He drummed his fingertips on the tabletop, thoughtful and frustrated both. "Oh, this is nothing."

Tuesday night, and Sam had finally given in. He had taken his two weeks' worth of clipped articles and laid them out on the coffee table in a makeshift timeline, trying to establish some kind of pattern through the chronology, and failing miserably. His eyes just weren't picking up the seemingly insignificant details as well they used to. God, he was rusty as hell. Ben was going to need a tetanus shot just from talking to him. A now-room temperature can of Coke was making a ring of condensation on the tabletop, and the television was on, volume low and for background noise only.

Ben cocked an eyebrow and crossed his arms, stepping up next to him. "This isn't nothing, dude. This is you, staring at articles detailing strange and gruesome accidents. For the past hour and a half. This is, like, serial killer behavior, man."

Sam laughed lightly, rubbed a hand across his chin. "Nah, this is just research."

"For _what_, exactly?"

With a dismissive wave of his hand, Sam said, "Just a thing." His ears suddenly perked and his head snapped up. He narrowed his eyes at the television. "Hey, turn that up."

Ben's eyes were wide, staring at Sam as though he had just sprouted a second head, but he obliged, grabbing the remote and tapping the volume button to bring the breaking newscast to an audible level.

_"…Body of nineteen-year-old Brandon Perry was found this morning in the courtyard outside of Stephen Maxwell Hall. No reports have yet been released about the cause of death, but several close friends of the Stanford student have told the police Perry had been acting 'out of it' for the past few days, claiming someone was out to get him…"_

"It's escalating," Sam breathed.

While the reporter had been talking, Ben had slowly sunk onto the couch next to Sam, eyes on the screen, mouth a perfect 'o'. "What's escalating?"

Sam shook his head solemnly, chewing the nail of his right ring finger. "I don't know yet."

"Sam, I gotta tell you, man. You're not making much sense."

Sam didn't respond to that, didn't have any way _to _respond. Just knew he was out of his league on this.

* * *

_Des Moines, Tuesday_

His two days were long up.

Dean had arrived in town on Saturday. Late at night, but, still. It was late in the afternoon and quickly leaking into the evening hours. His dad hadn't called and wasn't answering any of the messages Dean had left over the span of the past few days. He was not now and had damn never been the one to wear the SuperNerd cape in their little troupe of avengers, and while he was perfectly capable of working his way around a library reference section, he was finding himself extremely frustrated with all of the nowhere he had gotten on this hunt.

He finally made a couple of calls to people who were known to actually answer their phones every now and then and figured he was as ready as he was going to be for round two with unidentified explosion-happy ghost freak. Dean loaded himself up with as much as he could carry on his person and headed out to the warehouse, the whole outing being something of an experiment.

An hour later, Dean didn't so much carry his shotgun back to the car as drag it. Experiment or not, Bobby had been right about the silver. It might have been nothing more than a guess, but it had worked; a single knife thrown into where Dean guessed its chest to be, and explosion-happy ghost freak was down for the count. He still wasn't sure what the damn thing was, but it was dead and looked to stay that way, and that was really all that mattered in the end. It had put up a hell of a fight, though.

The splintering of more than one window had created new cuts on his hands and face and reopened some of the existing ones. Any movement of his right arm brought a hammer down on those railroad spikes in his shoulder blade, the hotspot of what was going to be quite the colorful bruise, rivaled only by the mark that would be appearing on his knee by morning. He was going to have to start wearing padding.

Dean leaned against the cool metal of the Impala and let out a breath, a small cloud in the chill autumn air. When his back met the frame of the car he winced and pulled away, reaching behind to pull the second, lead-loaded handgun from his waistband. He hissed as the cuts on his hand brushed against the material of his shirt. Dean half-turned and tossed the gun through the open window, disgusted at how utterly useless the thing had been, what a waste of some perfectly good bullets. And then fell back with a thud against the side of the car.

He contemplated very seriously just taking off; he had everything in the car, usually did just in case, and could very easily ditch the motel bill – booked under a fake name anyway – and be on his merry way. It was a tempting thought, but Dean didn't really have anywhere to go. He wouldn't mind dropping in on that redhead he met back in Lincoln, had actually hung onto her number, but just didn't have it in him at the moment.

He was fully capable of handling a variety of hunts on his own, and had been doing so for years, but he was feeling run-down; older and more tired than someone his age should. Dean certainly wasn't one to get all touchy-feely and 'remember when', but this whole hunting thing had just seemed so much easier back when it was the three of –

The sudden trill of the cell phone in his pocket caused Dean to jump and he knocked his elbow into the side of the car. He shook his head at himself and rubbed a hand over his face, reaching for the phone. The kind of crap he dealt with on a daily basis and a _cell phone _spooked him?

It was a number he didn't recognize, and at the moment, he couldn't even place the area code, though it seemed vaguely familiar. Dean snapped open the phone. "Hello?"

There was silence on the other end. Dean squinted, pressing the phone harder against his ear, trying to pick up any background noises. An area code he didn't recognize… "Dad?"

At that, there was a quick, shaky intake of breath, a sound almost like a laugh. _"Dean, hey."_

And the laugh made sense, because it was absurd. Not Dad. Not even close.

Dean's mouth opened and closed a few times, unable to create any coherent sounds. If possible, he leaned even more heavily against the car, letting his body nearly melt into it. The timing was…concerning.

_"It's, uh, it's me. It's Sam."_

The automatic response of his quick-with-a-wit brain was something along the lines of 'no shit, Sherlock,' but for one of the few times in his life, Dean's mouth had nothing to say.

* * *

To be continued...


	2. Chapter 2

ChapterTwo

"_If I'd have called, would you have picked up?"_

_Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 2001_

It had taken all of two days for John to pack up their meager belongings and move the hell out of there. It took him longer than Dean would have put money on, actually. He had been out, just needing the comfort of _away_, and had come home from an aimless and loud afternoon drive to a gruff _"_We'releaving_." _Everything of John's was already zipped up and in the truck; he'd even taken the liberty of packing Dean's stuff for him. At least he'd waited for Dean to get back.

That was that and they were out. Out of a town that had done little more than leave them, too. Dean had gotten _really_ good at laying blame on things that happened to be in close proximity to the actual something or _someone_ (read: Sam) he was actually angry at. It was for this reason he now found himself hating more than one small town across the country.

They pulled up their roots – figuratively speaking, of course, as this tree of Winchesters was fairly rootless – and got the hell out of Dodge with two sets of tires squealing and spinning a cloud of grit and gravel. They traveled northeast at speeds averaging eighty-five miles an hour, constantly keeping an eye out a mile ahead for those sneaky state troopers. Dean didn't say anything about it to his old man, but he had been more than a little nervous pressing that pedal to keep up with the truck; he hadn't had the time or motivation to get his license renewed and it was well past due. It was damned if you do, damned if you don't, so Dean just kept his mouth shut and his eyes alert, well aware of just how damned he was.

John was a man on a mission. What that particular mission was, well, that was still undecided. The trip had entailed just over twenty hours on the road and they didn't stop for more than gas, coffee, or some semblance of a restroom until they could see water. Those gas station breaks had been sullen and silent and Dean had had only enough time to grab some jerky and candy bars before John would summon him with a jerk of the head and they were on their way again. By the time they crossed the state line Dean had a passenger seat loaded with Styrofoam cups and candy wrappers and dark circles under his eyes. John just looked pissed.

He told Dean they'd headed for the coast because of rumblings of a siren or some other kind of water beastie; he'd been mumbling – but Dean hadn't heard for himself anything about that and figured it was really because New Hampshire was about as far away from California as they could get without needing a passport.

Their room in Portsmouth was small, smaller even than those times when money was really tight and Sam had been stretched out on the floor with an extra blanket or curled in the chair in the corner. It was gray and dreary, but not for lack of trying. A half dozen small porcelain fish brightly spotted the wall between the twin beds, and a plastic lobster stared at Dean from next to the television. He was overcome with an urge to hurl the thing into the street to get caught under a street sweeper. That, or tuck it away in his bag when his dad wasn't looking. Either way, the thing was just screaming, _steal_ _me!_

John stood silently at the sliding glass door and gazed longingly at the harbor through the rain, as though three thousand miles and two days just wasn't enough. He looked ready to run or jump or fly. Took a slow pull from a bottle Dean didn't know he had picked up, but was only mildly surprised by the act. He hadn't seen his dad drink in awhile, long enough to make note of the occasion, but if something was going to bring it out again, it was this.

After a few days in town Dean definitely wasn't buying the hunting story he was being fed, because this was his _dad_, and the man he knew would never mix guns and knives with as much hard liquor as he had consumed since they stopped driving. Drinking, and not talking, and definitely not hunting. Not anything more than hangover, anyway, and he had already bagged a few of those, consecutively.

Even more than that, John wasn't sharing. Dean had been offered drinks since he was eighteen years old, but it had been made very clear this was to be a drinking binge of the one-man kind. He barely spoke to Dean, save to ask what kind of burger he wanted. There was no mention of Sam.

Dean didn't know what to do, didn't know what he _should _do, and so he just lagged behind in his dad's dusky shadow, collecting bottles, bagging trash, and washing clothes. The things Sam would do if he were there.

For the first time, he really appreciated just how much work Sam had done to keep their many various living quarters habitable. In his entire life, to the few people that had the pleasure or displeasure – it was really up to them – of knowing Dean he hadn't been known as the type who kept things clean. If it wasn't his hair, the trunk of his car, or the inside of a double barrel he didn't really give a crap about its appearance. His belongings were organized into their own special disorganized heaps, and that's the way he liked it. _He_ knew where everything was.

Sam wasn't around anymore, wouldn't be now, and the place was really going to start to reek of more than dingy motel room if Dean didn't take up the role of maid, because Lord knew they couldn't let housekeeping in. So Dean straightened up the room, went to the office for fresh towels, picked up the greasy burger wrappers, soda and beer cans. He did it because of the smell, and because otherwise he would go crazy. He couldn't let himself slow down, would be damned if he let himself stop. Because then he would have to think, and thinking led to dwelling, and dwelling led to a world of hurt, frustration, and fury Dean wasn't prepared to accept and deal with. Not now, not ever. It was so much easier to just pretend things hadn't gone down the way they had. It was certainly working well for his dad.

They'd already spent six days on the Coast. John left Dean to his own devices just about every day. He was usually gone by the time Dean woke up, and didn't return until late into the night, if he returned at all. It wasn't lost on Dean the motel his dad had chosen was three blocks away from something that looked like some slightly richer version of their usual dives. The drinks would cost more, but he didn't think his dad really cared at this point.

That first night in town, Dean had gone around the corner to the liquor store and come back with a six-pack and fifth of Beam; companions for however long John was going to keep him there. There would be no bar or bed-hopping for Dean; God alone knew – and even that was pushing it – when John would decide that it was time to kill something, or time to split, and Dean knew that he had better damn well be ready for when that happened, lest he be left behind in this godforsaken place.

Portsmouth was _not _Dean's idea of a good time. He'd been able to buy the beer cold, and that was a plus, but the town was tiny and gray and, in that East Coast way, a bit too upscale for their typical hole-ups. They were drawing stares, obviously outsiders. The Impala was sleek and impressive, clunky in a way that made its presence known; John's truck stuck out like a sore thumb in the shiny sea of Jags and Beemers, streaked with dirt, front right tire up on the curb outside of the motel room.

Two more days rolled slowly by, and Dean still hadn't brought up the hunt they were supposedly on. He wanted to, if for nothing else to make his dad defensive and go on the move again, because he was getting more restless by the minute. Now, when he wasn't driving or cleaning he was pacing, wearing a track across the room that was visible to Dean and Dean alone. The only things his dad could see were the rain and a row of empty shot glasses.

Dean refused to believe John was really spending all of those lost hours at the bar, but it was easier for him to think that than the alternative; that his dad was out killing all sorts of lurking evil without him, dealing with things the only way Winchesters knew to deal with things.

Except for the whole leaving thing.

On the morning of the ninth day, John lumbered noisily into the room just before three. He'd probably hung around the bar until closing and stumbled around for a bit after that, not wanting to be so disgustingly drunk when he finally came back to the room. He failed miserably, and all those more favorable alternative thoughts of John out hunting without him were lost as Dean shot up in bed, knife in hand and ready to go.

"Jesus _Christ_, Dean."

"Dad? What timezit?"

"Late. I was out."

Dean recoiled as the smell of alcohol hit him. He winced and shifted to sit on the edge of his bed, legs swinging out. "Yeah, I see that."

"'Scuse me?"

"Nothin'."

"S'what I thought." John moved across the room and into the tiny bathroom, slamming the door behind him. The thin door rattled in its frame, and Dean leaned forward, rubbing his forehead, wishing he had the balls to do some leaving of his own.

Dean didn't know how long his dad was in the bathroom; he had pretty much passed out again, slumped to the side, and when the door opened he snapped awake a second time with a crick in his neck immediately demanding his attention. He was kneading the spot and staring at his feet, and so didn't see his dad cross to his side of the room. He jumped a near foot in the air when the large, heavy hand fell on his shoulder in a sloppy squeeze.

"It's you and me, kid."

Dean looked up into faraway eyes. John's demeanor had completely changed. He would remember coming home from the bar, would remember Dean being a smartass, but would not remember this moment. And maybe that was better. Maybe it made it all easier.

With a sigh, Dean gave the hand on his shoulder a lazy pat. "I know, Dad."

When he awoke for real the next morning, sometime around eleven, he assumed the two dirty twenties on the dresser meant they were staying at least one more night. Dad and the truck were gone. Driving was a good sign. Driving meant they would be leaving soon. Maybe only for another dark town with another dark bar, but Dean would take it, if it wasn't in New Hampshire.

Dean spent another day driving aimlessly around town, feeling utterly lost and mocked by every license plate boasting the state's motto: _Live free, or die!_

And he thought bitterly, _this is Sam's kind of town._

* * *

_Tuesday_

In the lengthy silence following that utterly pathetic need to identify himself to his own flesh and blood _brother_ Sam paced and gnawed his left thumbnail, wondering if this was really such a good idea, if maybe his SAT score had been swapped with that of someone who had maybe done a few less dumbass things in their life, and if he had somehow managed to render mute his perpetually loud and annoying older brother. It was pretty buzzy in his head. He only hoped Dean would say something before his nail was gone or his head exploded, whichever would happen first.

"_Sam."_

Sam swallowed. He felt like he was twelve again and in trouble for leaving the doors of the Impala unlocked. Even worse – and he had learned the hard way there wasn't much that was – was the fact that he couldn't place the emotion in Dean's voice. It could have been 'I've missed you like hell' or 'go fuck yourself'. Probably more of the latter, but at least it was something. "Yeah." Wow, was he ever lame.

"_You dial the wrong number or something?"_

There was a catch in Dean's voice – a lift, and what Sam interpreted as a kind of permission for him to make the situation lighter than they both knew it was because Dean didn't know what else to do with it. He knew Dean, or would like to think that he did, understood that he most likely wanted nothing more than to yell but at the same time didn't want to drive Sam to hang up, not after getting him on the phone after all this time. This was some kind of compromise in his eyes. He took the opening Dean gave him. "I'm kinda surprised you haven't changed it, actually."

"_I'm kinda surprised you remembered it."_

_Ouch. _Okay, so maybe Sam had misjudged that full extent of that little hitch. Jokes were not okay right now. Lesson learned. True, there were a dozen different arguments he could start with the door Dean's comment left open, but he took the high road instead. "How've you been?"

Dean snorted. _"Oh, God."_

Sam winced. Who the hell did he think he was trying to kid? Small talk? This was _Dean._

"_What do you want, Sam?"_

He felt his face flush, angered that Dean would jump to such a conclusion and annoyed because he was right. It was hard to fight so many years of practice and habit, and Sam found himself taking the defensive. "What? Because that's the only reason I would call?" _After two years._ He continued pacing, wearing an invisible track in the carpet between the couch and coffee table.

"_Sam. I'm not really in the mood for this right now. If you need something…"_

"Okay. Okay, yes. I do. In a way."

"_What, you need money? You're barkin' up the wrong tree. I'm not exactly Daddy Warbucks here."_

"Okay, that's a really strange analogy, and one I'm not touching with a ten-foot pole, but no, I don't need money."

Silence resumed on the other end, and Sam was about ready to just be the chickenshit he was and disconnect the call. Pretend it was a prank, or that he really wasn't Sam. _Is your refrigerator running? _What the hell was he _thinking_, calling Dean out of the blue like this?

"_The joke was that you're a little girl."_

Sam wanted to be pissed, he really, really did. But he couldn't be, because he wanted to laugh and because he knew he had no right to be ticked at his brother for anything right then. His entire life, there was nothing Dean wouldn't do for him, and he knew what a slap in the face it must be to have this be the reason Sam reestablished contact after all that lost time.

He swallowed, just counting down the seconds until _Dean _hung up on _him. _"Dean, I'm trying to be serious."

Dean chuckled, sounding weary and much older than he should. Sam could see him as though he were standing right there: rubbing a hand over his face, wearing a crooked smile, looking more like Dad than he knew. _"You've never been anything else, Sam. What do you need?"_

Sam waited for his circuit to take to him to the hallway and peered around the corner, making sure Ben was still locked away in his room. The door was shut, and Sam could hear the faint plinking of classical music, his roommate's study soundtrack of choice. Verdi, Sam thought. He himself was book smart, sure, but Benjamin Evan Howard III? He was scary smart. Like, child prodigy smart. Like, shipped off to a special school when he was five smart. And a psychology major, which was just never a good thing.

"_Sam?"_

Satisfied Ben was deep into his studying and wouldn't be resurfacing for awhile, Sam retreated to the far end of the living room, through the sliding glass door and out onto the small balcony that was the reason they had decided on the place. "Yeah."

"_You just gonna leave me hanging in suspense here, Sammy?"_

The balcony was barely wide enough to hold one person, and it was near impossible for both he and Ben to stand outside at the same time, but at that word it seemed like all the room in the world. He felt about two inches tall. _Sammy. _It wasn't affectionate, the way it used to be. It was almost…belittling. Just, really, _really _what was he _thinking_? _Best to just get it over with_. "There's some stuff going on around here, Dean."

"_Okaaay, Captain Cryptic. You wanna vague that up a little more for me?"_

Sam bent over the railing, bracing his forearms, and gazed out over the dusky cityscape. "I tried to look into it myself, but I'm not getting anywhere."

_"Tried to look into what…" _And then it was like something clicked in Dean's brain, and there was a lengthy pause on the other end. Sam could hear the wheels turning, could hear Dean start and stop several times. _"Like a hunt?" _he asked finally.

Sam gave an exasperated sigh. "No, not like a hunt." He refused to give what he was doing that label. He was doing nothing more than his civic duty. As a citizen of the city, and of the United States. Right. Yeah. _I don't hunt anymore. _"It was just some weird shit. But the other night, somebody died."

_"Died how?"_

"I don't know."

_"Well, what's going on?"_

"I don't know."

"_Sam, I don't understand what you…" _Dean sighed. "_You want Bobby's number or something?"_

"Not exactly."

"_Then WHAT exactly?" _Dean's frustration was increasing by tangible levels. _"You…you want me and Dad to…" _Sam could almost feel the weight of the boulders that had been required to force even those few words out of Dean's mouth.

"No. No, I don't...I don't want Dad to come."

_"Then, Sam, what…I don't – "_

Sam closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of nose; never in a million years would he have guessed talking to his brother would be this _hard_. "I want your help, Dean. Not Bobby's, and not Dad's." _NOT Dad's. _

_"Sam – "_

"I don't want to see him. And he's not gonna wanna see me. I mean it, Dean."

"_You're really serious about this?"_

"Not wanting to see Dad?"

"_You really want my help?"_

"Yeah, I do."

This pause was actually so long, Sam found himself watching the second hand on his watch as it made its slow path around the watch face. Twice. Was so long Sam had time to wonder what the hell had happened since he left that caused Dean to _think _so damn _much_.

"_Alright. Alright, let me run it by him, and I'll – "_

"No, Dean. No. Don't tell him anything. Don't even tell him that you talked to me."

"_I can't just disappear. I gotta tell him something, Sammy."_

Sam was now the one whose frustration was growing exponentially; but, really, why should he expect anything more than Dean worrying more about what Dad would like versus what Sam would need? "Then make something up. You're good at that, aren't you?" he snapped.

Dean sucked in a breath, barked a bitter laugh. _"So much for repressing things."_ It was the kind of comment most people would make under their breath, but Dean couldn't be bothered with formalities such as tact.

"Dean."

_"Yeah."_

"Don't tell Dad."

One last, long, overly dramatic, 'I just gotta let you know how pissed I am about this,' sigh. Sam thought, disappointed, _he's just like Dad._

"_I won't, Sam."_

* * *

This was sure to be the hardest part. Dean wasn't the only one who was good at making stuff up; Sam himself was a decent enough liar when he needed to be. So, sometimes. A few times. Maybe twice, ever. The point being, he hadn't exactly been forthcoming with what the popular majority might refer to as "the truth" over the past couple of years. And the truth, lead foot and all, was about twenty-six hours out of Palo Alto. He could afford to put this off just a little longer, but that would only make it worse in the end, he was sure.

So Sam knocked on the door of Ben's bedroom and shifted his weight until the door was pulled open. "Hey, can I talk to you for a sec?"

"Sure." Ben rolled his desk chair around to the other side of his desk and hit the 'stop' button on his stereo. Classical music on CD. They just didn't make 'em like Ben anymore. He rolled back to center, pushed his glasses up onto his head, and leaned back, a hand propped up on the arm of his chair. "What's up?"

"Well…" Sam took a few steps into the room and absently scratched at the back of his head. "My, uh, my brother's coming to visit." More of a buffer might have been nice; he hadn't actually intended to just blurt it all out just like that.

Ben's face was a dictionary-perfect picture of confusion. "You…have a brother?"

And that was why. "Yeah, I really never – I'm sure I told you."

"Noooo." Ben leaned back in his desk chair, regarded Sam with a cock of the eyebrow that reminded him way too much of Dean. "You told me that you grew up in a foster home as an only child and never met your birth parents."

_Oh. Right. _"Yeah. That's not…entirely true."

"Which part?"

Sam opened his mouth. "Wh…" Shut it. Opened it again. "All of it."

"Sam," Ben breathed, setting himself in his chair and gearing up for some psycho-bullshit babble. He did that from time to time. "Sam, Sam, Sam." He knew what Ben was thinking: compulsive liar. Maybe delusional. _Clearly _heading for some kind of psychotic breakdown. Maybe he wasn't so far off.

"Yeah, I know. I'm a mess." Sam sank heavily onto the edge of Ben's perfectly made bed. "Can we just…forget the analysis on the pathetic state of my mental health until after he leaves?"

"When's he coming?"

Internal pump of the fist. Ben was letting it go. "Tomorrow. Late."

Ben's head bobbed. "Is something goin' on?"

"No." Sam gave his head the slightest shake. "No, just a visit."

"And he's arriving late at night."

"Yep." Ben was staring, and Sam realized he was waiting for more of an explanation. "He works nights, so he's used to being up. Said he'd rather drive during the night than the day and throw off his internal clock, you know?"

Ben nodded, very, very slowly. Cocked his shoulder and turned back to his open textbook. "Alright."

Despite feeling like he was going to puke, Sam was grinning when he left the room. He was a decent enough liar when he needed to be.

* * *

_Wednesday_

Dean wasn't sure just what it was this college thing was teaching Sammy, because the kid couldn't seem to grasp the concept of geography. Or of the time/space continuum.

"_Are you coming? Or did you pit stop for a beer and a redhead?" _

"She was blonde, actually." Dean rolled his eyes. "Give a guy a break, Sammy. I was working a job in Des Moines. That's not exactly down the street from you." He shot a glance at the side mirror. "Besides, it's not even noon yet." He had driven all night. Wasn't pissed in the least about it, either, because hadn't he _wanted_ to just pack up and take off?

There was a slow pause. "_Sam_."

"SAM," Dean repeated, dramatic and drawn-out. It was like he wasn't even listening. Why put in the effort?

A sigh like a wounded puppy. _"Look, I didn't call to fight. I was looking over the articles that I have, and I missed something well, something pretty obvious. I thought there wasn't a connection between the three victims, but it looks like they all…"_

Two beeps sounded over the line. Call waiting. Leaving Sam to ramble on, Dean pulled the phone away from his ear and checked the ID. _Are you KIDDING me with this?_

"Sam, lemme get back to you." Not waiting for a response, not waiting to hear the end of Sam's thought, Dean pulled the phone away, swapped the calls, and brought it back to his ear, muttering to himself. "I am one popular SOB today – hey, Dad." It just figured, it really just did. He'd been trying to get a hold of the man for days, and THIS EXACT SECOND was when he decided to call back.

_"Dean, I need you here." _

The lack of greeting was to be expected, and even if it wasn't, Dean didn't have time to dwell on it. _Shit. Shit shit shit. _It was time to start ly…stretching the truth. "I'm not completely wrapped up around here, Dad – "

_"It's a poltergeist, Dean. Salt and burn."_

_Oh, is that what it is? _Hoping his dad hadn't spoken with Bobby in the last day or so, Dean took a chance. "Yeah, I know that's what we thought, but I ran into a…snag." _Of the tall, gangly, annoyingly tidy variety._

John sighed. He recognized it as the, 'why are we even having this conversation,' sigh, and Dean winced. _"We're tracking some serious shit here, Dean. This could be it. I need you to back me up."_

"Yeah, I know that, Dad – "

"_Then you're on your way."_

It wasn't a question, and it certainly didn't sound like anything that was going to be put up for debate. "It's not a poltergeist, it's something else."

John let out a short breath, and Dean knew that his patience was wearing thin. _"What kind of something else is it? Some kind of possession?"_

_Sure._ "Haven't quite figured that out just yet."

_"Dean, I really don't have time to – "_

"I've got it covered, Dad. I'm just gonna need an extra day." Dean squinted, glanced in the rearview mirror, almost expecting to see his dad's truck behind him, ready to catch him in his lie. "Or so."

_"Or so? Dean, what exactly is going on there?"_

"Nothing I can't handle, Dad, I swear." And then before the conversation could continue any further, Dean turned one of John Winchester's most favorite lines around on him. "Look, I gotta go, but I'll meet up with you as soon as I can, okay?" He pulled the phone away and snapped it shut, letting out the long _whoosh _of air he had been holding in.

When the phone rang less than a minute later, Dean didn't even check the screen. "Dad, I'll call you back when I get –"

_"You hung up on me, jerk."_

He couldn't help himself. "Bitch."

* * *

There were few guarantees in life, but if there was one, it was Sam Winchester was doomed to live a life of guilt. Because Dean wasn't even in the state yet and it seemed he was ditching Dad's calls. On the one hand, Sam didn't know Dean had it in him, and on the other, hello, guilt trip, how've you been the last coupla years?

Right back in it. He was right. Back. In it.

Sam tossed his cell onto his bed and stared at it for a few minutes before feeling the need to pretend it didn't exist. Dean would be there by ten, come Hell or high water – Dean's words, not his, and heavy on the sarcasm, surely. Sam pulled at the hair snaking behind his right ear. He was being an imposition, being annoying little Sammy all over again, demanding Dean drop everything and come to his rescue. Kind of. He needed Dean to come and take this crazy shit away from him, to make it go away so he could put it out of his mind and focus on the things he should be focusing on. Things that didn't include phantom snake bites or murderous dormitory showers. So he could back out of it.

He snuck a glance at his phone, discarded and quiet on his plain blue bedspread, and felt like he was waiting for something. He wasn't sure exactly for what. Maybe for the store to call him into work so he would have something to do that wasn't staring at his cell phone, maybe for Dean to call and tell him to fuck off, maybe for Dean to call and say that he was downstairs and could Sam buzz him up? That was one hell of a sobering thought, and Sam's range of focus widened considerably. There was no way the place was ready for Dean to see it.

What did he care? He didn't care what Dean thought of the place, had told Ben they weren't going to do anything special with regards to cleaning because he didn't have to do anything special for Dean. Dean wouldn't care. He was the kind of guy who didn't change much, which meant that he wasn't going to give an honest shit about what Sam's place looked like; but he was going to make Sam _think _he did, just to drive Sam nuts. He could just HEAR it: _this plate's a little streaky, Princess. What's the matter, can't invest in some decent dish soap?_ And it would never stop. There was sure to be an endless barrage of half-assed digs from the moment Dean stepped into town until he peeled out.

Standing in the middle of his bedroom, Sam resolved he wasn't going to let Dean get to him. Not here, not now.

After a whole two and a half minutes, he broke.

* * *

To be continued...


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

"_You lie to your friends 'cause if they knew the real you, they'd be freaked. It's just…it'd be easier if…"_

"…_if I was like you."_

"_Hey, man. Like it or not, we are not like other people."_

_Stanford University, Fall 2001_

"_This is Dean, leave a message."_

_Damn it, Dean. _Sam replaced the receiver with a frustrated huff that was only mildly hurt. More frustrated, bordering on pissed, even. Maybe Sam didn't know exactly what it was he was going to say if and when Dean answered his phone, but he'd called, right? That was the whole point. Sam's call shouldn't have gone unanswered.

On the one hand, it had been a week already, and he hadn't exactly shut that door under the best of circumstances. He hadn't told Dean he was going to call, but with all they'd been through together, maybe it had been implied? Expected? It wasn't like he hadn't wanted to call, but it had been a long bus ride, and he didn't have a cell phone of his very own; he wasn't a runaway made of money. He'd called as soon as he had the chance, really. The dorm room had a land line like every dorm room across the US, and it was first thing he did after he unpacked. And toured the campus. And ate. And slept. And ate again. And went to his first class. But after that? The very first thing he did.

On the other hand, it had only been a week, and it wasn't as though he had left with a "fuck you" or anything. Not one directed at Dean, at least. Dean hadn't even been in the room for the worst parts of The Fight. Now, in retrospect, Sam thought maybe that's why they _were_ the worst parts of The Fight. But that was already the past, and Sam was well on his way to getting around to putting it behind him. Of course, there was still plenty of anger simmering away at his father, and here now stood the opportunity for some of that anger to be redirected to a less deserving but much more available outlet.

Displacement at its finest: Dean should have answered his phone. Dean _always_ answered his phone, especially when it was Sam calling. He was predictable, and Sam depended on that predictability, and here Dean was, letting him down.

How Sam even _thought_ such things without just spontaneously bursting into flame was beyond him.

Dean didn't deserve this emotional hostility. He hadn't done anything except be there for Sam and do everything he ever could for his little brother. Sam was the one who let him down by walking away. Of course, there was no way for him to let Dean _know _this unless he picked up his phone.

It then occurred to Sam to wonder _why _Dean hadn't answered his phone.

There were all the apparent reasons, sure. The most obvious being that he was just pissed. He might have left his phone behind in the room and hopped in the car to do nothing but put the pedal to the floor until he was either pulled over or ran out of gas. It certainly wouldn't have been the first time. He could be with a girl, much too preoccupied to deal with the little things like answering calls from his runaway little brother. Maybe he saw the incoming call and ignored it, not recognizing the area code. He could also be on a hunt, phone off in his pocket.

He could also be on a hunt, phone nowhere near his limp and bloody hand, attached to his equally limp and bloody body; caught unawares by something that goes bump in the night because his backup wasn't there to back him up.

Sam called back after that thought, knowing full well that no answer could mean injury or anger, maybe both, and whether the line was picked up or not the image would be sticking with him for awhile.

"_This is Dean, leave a message."_

"Just…just making sure you're okay," he muttered, hanging up the phone in the middle of the last word and speaking so quietly that the message would probably just come out breathy and creepy and Dean would definitely not be calling back a creepy breather with a California area code. Who was he kidding; Dean wouldn't call back if he had left a message begging for forgiveness until the voicemail cut him off. Not after a week. Something like this needed time. Apparently.

All Sam could do was to start his new life. After all, that's what he wanted, right? That's why he took such a leap of faith in the direction of _away_.

He wasn't quite sure what he was expecting out of a university dorm room, but, surely, it was more than this. There was the phone and a window, but really, the "room" was barely the size of a walk-in closet, not that Sam had had much contact with those. It reminded him of what he imagined a prison cell to look like, and he felt as though he'd lived in his fair share of those in his time. It really wouldn't have surprised him to find bars on the tiny window. Was freedom supposed to be so cramped and restricting? Sam had no idea how he was supposed to live in this room, let alone with another person. He'd gone in potluck, having no friends to speak of, and, as it turned out, none of these nonexistent friends had been accepted by Stanford.

He'd arrived in town two days before, and while on something of a drugless high at the prospects of UNIVERSITY and FRIENDS and NORMAL, Sam had found himself somewhat crushed, staring down at his solitary duffle bag at the foot of his skinny, too short by nearly half a foot bed, equipped with absolutely nothing in the way of bedding. He hadn't thought about having to prepare with things like sheets and a pillow. He supposed this was why they had those midnight Wal-mart runs for freshmen. And there he stood, in a naked dorm room with less than a hundred dollars in his pocket, less than half of which was actually _his_.

His assigned roommate, Craig, was…what Sam expected, he supposed. Normal? Polo shirts and jeans he'd paid seventy dollars to have kids in Cambodia rip holes into for him. Skin so orange the tan had to be artificial (On a_ guy?) _Hair highlighted and styled with so much product it should be considered a fire hazard. And Craig didn't take that joke so well. While he didn't see himself becoming great friends with the guy, Sam told himself he was going to make this work.

Orientation had been like…coming home. At the very least, to a home that would be HOME for longer than anywhere else had. And the best part was there was no one around that could tell him otherwise, that could rip him a new one for thinking so. And since this was true, he even said it out loud, to the first person who would listen: a tall, clean-cut kid with glasses in front of him in line at the dining hall after some kind of freshman pep talk the afternoon before classes would start.

"That's…nice," had been the kid's reply, accompanied by an appraising eyebrow cock reminiscent of Dean's own. "Kinda, you know, weird. But nice, I guess."

And then something really unexpected happened, considering how much of a dork Sam had just presented himself as, first impressions being what they are and all. The guy turned and offered his hand. "I'm Ben."

* * *

_Wednesday_

"Back in a few."

Ben looked up from his books but before he could respond or, more accurately, before he was given the chance to respond, he heard the front door open and immediately shut. _Okaaay, then._

He went right back to his studying; had one of those psych professors this semester who really loved essays and a bitch of an exam next class, a Friday, for fuck's sake, and really didn't have the time for this. If Sam wanted to go and be all neurotic just because his brother – whose existence he had kept a secret for the past year and a half – was coming to visit, then that was just fine. He would just sit back, observe, and take notes for his eventual doctoral research and thesis. Sam would be so happy to have helped as much as he was.

Sam was gone only forty minutes – awesome timing for a man without a car – and upon his return went about his business in the main room without a word. Whatever Sam's business was, it was clanky, plastic-y, and loud enough that Ben nudged his bedroom door with the toe of his shoe and tuned the racket out entirely. Fifteen minutes later, when he heard something sounding suspiciously like a cross between a vacuum cleaner and a turbo jet engine, Ben's first thought was, _what the hell_?

He stuck his leg out again and wedged the toe of his sneaker into the inch-wide crack between door and frame and dragged it open. Yep; definitely a vacuum cleaner, and a loud-ass one at that. Ben sighed and tossed his pen and glasses to his desktop, pushing up out of his chair. It was time for an intervention of the immediate kind. Under the archway connecting the main living area to the short hall leading to their bedrooms Ben stopped short in shock and awe.

Sam was across the apartment, bent in half over the largest, most unnecessary-for-a-pair-of-college-men-who-didn't-clean vacuum cleaner he'd ever seen. He was clearly struggling with the appliance; didn't have enough of the cord unraveled and was two seconds from pulling the plug right out of the wall as he tried to maneuver the beast around the side of the couch. It was almost as if the man had never used a vacuum before.

"Sam, can I ask you an honest-to-God serious question?" Ben had to shout over the 747 roar of the colossal appliance.

Sam didn't even look up from his task of eventual fuse-blowing. "Yeah, I think it's by the sink."

Ben's eyebrows jumped and he smiled. He crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. "SAM."

"Hmm?" This time Sam did look up, frozen with a death grip on the handle, the vacuum jumping and jerking. The lights flickered.

Afraid that keeping such a monstrosity sucking in the same place for too long would pull a square of carpeting right off the floor, Ben jerked his thumb across his throat. "Cut the engine, dude." _Before you blow out the power to the whole building._

"Oh, right," Sam yelled. "Yeah. Sure." He hunched over the handle again, searching for the switch. It went on for a good ten seconds before he glanced up, embarrassed, and just yanked the cord from the socket.

Ben's lip quirked. "Where'd you get the Binford 5000 there?"

A blank stare. Lord, did Sam grow up under a rock?

"The vacuum?"

"What?"

"We don't have a vacuum cleaner."

"I don't understand what you – "

"Sam."

Sam raised his eyebrows. "Ben?" He was _not_ good at playing dumb. Not as good a liar as he seemed to think.

"Did you buy that vacuum just because your brother's coming?"

"What? No. No, that would be ridiculous." Sam started moving erratically around the room. "Really, would – would you look at this carpet? And the dust on that bookcase? We live like animals, man. Just…animals."

Ben blinked.

"Do…do we have any dish soap that isn't, you know, a store brand?"

* * *

Dean had never received as many calls as he had in the past twenty-four hours. His phone was ringing off its metaphorical hook. He would never in a million years understand the ways of the universe, or karma, or whatever it was fucking with his head, because the calls were all coming from the two people who had always seemed to go out of their way to _not _contact him.

Dean had ignored the past two phone calls from his father. That was and always had been – at least for the past two years – his limit, and even then it really all depended on the spacing of the calls, which in turn depended on John's mood at the time. Two calls within a couple of hours Dean could write off as missing due to a hunt or information-gathering; of course then he had to make up a hunt or witness. But two calls occurring in the span of a couple of days meant that the first time John had called and gotten no answer, he had hung up pissed, not in any mood to put up with any shit and left Dean to feel guilty until he called back. These were the times when Dean answered that second call on the first ring.

This avoidance tactic had been employed only twice. Once, right after Sam left, and a second time a few months later, when John himself had disappeared, incommunicado, for three weeks and Dean was in no hurry to put his old man's mind at ease when he finally decided to check in. He'd called Dean's cell twice in an hour and a half, so Dean had answered the third call, coming in an impressive seven minutes later. Turned out John was doing twenty over the speed limit out of Charleston with two state troopers on his ass and a near-mangled left arm, and was not too happy Dean hadn't been picking up. Dean hadn't ignored a call since.

He'd already made up a hunt, or, rather, fictionally extended the hunt he had already finished, and so the two missed calls could be easily written off, like a corporate expense. Three calls, though; three calls and John would know that something was up. Dean held his cell against the steering wheel and let it ring twice before answering; giving the impression it hadn't been readily available in his hand the whole time. "Yeah."

_"Dean."_

"Yeah – "

_"I've been trying to reach you."_

"I know, I was – "

_"I called up a friend. He's gonna come out there and take over…whatever it is you're doing. And you're gonna come meet me here in Richmond."_

An order. Dean did a lot, there was no arguing that; but he didn't disobey an order from his dad. And here he was: Dad versus Sam and Dean stuck in the middle, totally and royally fucked, a very familiar place to be. He thought he had left all of this shit well behind him. It was like having a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other, only with two devils. Dean dropped his head and gave it a quick knock against the steering wheel.

_"Dean?"_

He put the phone back against his ear and stared at the endless white line running along the right edge of the road, lies forming so fast in his head he couldn't pick one out to run with. _What_ _the_ _hell_ – like he'd never lied to his father before.

John accepted the silence as a pissed acquiescence. He did that a lot. _"Dean, I'm gonna give you Virgil's number so you can give him your exact location. You got a pen?"_

_Yes, I always drive with my phone in one hand and a pen in the other._ Dean shoved his phone between his left ear and shoulder, grabbed the wheel with that hand, and reached over to pop the glove box with his right, groping for some kind of writing utensil. He found a Sharpie and was pulling a crumpled, two-day-old burger wrapper from off the car mat before he thought, _why am I even writing this down?_

"Go ahead." He copied down the number, agreed with one-word responses that he would call this Virgil within the hour to hand off his imaginary hunt and meet up with his dad in Virginia. He disconnected the call without a clue as to what the fuck he was doing.

It was then that Dean realized that he was driving in the middle of the lanes and had no idea what road he was on. Hadn't been paying attention for God only knew how long. So it really just figured when his cell rang. Again.

"_Hey, are you close?"_ Sam, this time. He could hear another voice in the background, could just barely make out the words "therapist" and "issues."

Dean pinched the bridge of his nose, shook his head. _What the hell are you getting yourself into?_ "I…think so." _God, I hope not._

_"Okay, I'm gonna give you the address to my building. You got a pen?"_

"Yeah, can you hang on a sec?" Without waiting for Sam to respond Dean dropped his cell to his lap and slammed his forehead against the steering wheel.

Thank God for early evening near-empty roads and quick reflexes.

* * *

Dean was getting annoyed with his calls, that much was obvious. He hadn't meant to call so much; he just wanted to make sure he was actually coming. Despite his better judgment and many mental hand-smacks, he had prepared way too much for this not-a-visit to be any less than one-hundred percent humiliated if Dean didn't actually show up. And it was a very real possibility. Maybe not a couple of years ago, but now, after two years of radio silence…yeah, a very real possibility.

"Sam?"

And that was the reason for the hypothetical humiliation right there. Because Ben was just so _Ben_. All smart and observant and always looking at everything and everyone through the metaphorical magnifying glass. He had to see everything, and he had to know everything, and, most importantly, he had to fix everything he perceived to be in need of a good fixing. It was the psych classes, Sam was sure. He didn't ever just have a conversation with someone, he interviewed them, studied them.

Sam looked to the ceiling, muttering to himself as he tucked his cell phone in his pocket. Dean was only an hour or so out of town, and Sam was only an hour or so away from spontaneously combusting. Okay, so maybe it wouldn't be so spontaneous if he was anticipating it, but it was sure to happen, nonetheless.

At a second insistent call from his roommate, Sam stepped from his bedroom into the hallway. "You've gotta be kidding me."

Ben was sitting ramrod straight in their ratty armchair; pen poised over a fresh legal pad, glasses perched on the end of his nose in a perfect little old lady librarian impersonation. When he saw Sam he motioned to the sofa. "Mr. Winchester, please, step into my office."

"Are you for real?"

He was. Sam sighed and moved to the couch, onto which he unceremoniously flopped.

"Great, let's get started. Mr. Winchester – is it alright if I call you 'Sam'?"

"Oh, _come _on – "

"Right. Let's move on. Sam, what made you feel the need to go out and by the vacuum cleaner to end all vacuum cleaners, at seven-thirty at night?"

"So, you're taking your newly official status of psychology major kinda serious, huh?" The confirmation email had come only two days before.

"The clock's running, Sam." Ben sighed self-righteously and scribbled something onto his notepad, for effect. He was enjoying this way too much. Sam was pretty sure that if Ben was writing anything on that legal pad it was, at most, a list of DVDs he was saving up for.

Slouching in the middle of the sofa, Sam replied dryly, "I'm a compulsive shopper."

"I thought you weren't cleaning up for your brother."

"I'm not."

"You told me, and I quote, 'I'm not cleaning up for my brother.' You even told me it was okay to leave my dirty laundry on the floor."

And, oh yeah, Ben _remembered _everything. "It is okay. You should feel free to be as…messy as you want," Sam deflected lamely.

"I don't leave my dirty laundry on the floor. You basically asked me to go out of my way to be messy." Ben leaned forward and peered over the rims of his glasses, morphing from little old lady librarian into wise old psychologist. God, he was gonna be good one day.

Sam sighed. "So it would appear."

"And then you buy…that thing."

Sam shrugged. "I told you, compulsive shopper."

"So you, what? Went out for ice cream and came back with a three hundred dollar vacuum? Don't tell me you went for ice cream without me, man."

Sam rubbed a hand over his eyes. "Look, Ben, I get it. I'm going all crazy, but you know what? I haven't seen or talked to my brother in two years. And he's going to be here in a couple of hours, and I could really do without all of this psychoanalysis right now."

"First of all, psychoanalysts are a bunch of crackpots. Secondly, and more seriously," Ben leaned forward, setting his legal pad of fake notes aside. Sam could swear he saw a doodle of Bart Simpson. "You do need this, because you need to think about why you're doing all of this, and how you feel about…"

"Dean."

"Dean, coming here."

Why couldn't Sam ever do something, _anything_, without having to explain himself? "He's not, like, _coming. _I asked him to come."

"Why'd you do that?"

Like hell he was going to drag Ben into the Winchester brand World of Weird and Crazy Shit. Ben was a good kid, a _normal_ kid, and Sam needed that to fall back on. He didn't want to corrupt Ben's vision of this puppy dogs and rainbows kind of world.

"When did you ask him?"

He had unknowingly deflected this difficult question with pursed lips and head-shaking, and found himself faced with another, much easier question. "Huh? Oh, yesterday."

"Just a random Tuesday in March?" Ben eyed him carefully as Sam nodded slowly. "Can I ask you something?"

"You can stop asking me _that,_" Sam muttered, only mostly under his breath.

Ben politely ignored the aside. "Is there something going on that I should know about?"

"No, Ben," he said wearily and just a touch too quickly. He didn't know how to explain without hurting Ben's feelings. Without making it sound exactly how it was: he had a secret problem in which he could include his estranged brother but not his best friend.

And, thank God, he didn't have to, because as Sam guiltily met Ben's accusing eyes, he heard through the windows a muffled but familiar rumble.

* * *

Dean checked the address he had scribbled down on that burger wrapper grabbed off the floor in the backseat, right under the phone number he wasn't going to call. Dean wasn't one for botching directions, but in this instance he was subconsciously – okay, more like very consciously – double-checking himself. It was not entirely inconceivable Sam might have given him a bogus address; another fuck you very much type of gesture, just like the two years of no contact. He matched what was written on the wrapper with the street sign at the corner and the number on the plain brick façade of the building he was parked in front of. At least it was a real building. But even then, he wasn't one-hundred percent sure until he saw the door open and Sam emerge, hands stuffed nervously into his pockets.

Dean was overcome with an urge to dash over to his brother, grab him by the collar, and throw him into the back of the car, dragging him back to his family where he belonged. Sam had single-handedly ripped them apart, maybe he was all that was needed to patch them up. He fought it, tightening his grip on the steering wheel. Sam took a couple steps away from the door and then stopped halfway down the sidewalk. Waiting for Dean to come to him?

Well, Dean wasn't a dog, thank you very much. He shut the car off, but sat with his hands on the wheel and stayed there long enough to communicate loud and clear: I have no desire to be here at all and I'll be damned if I'm making the first move. Sam stepped hesitantly up to the passenger side and leaned down to greet his brother, even opened his mouth before he dumbly realized that the window was rolled up.

Dean glanced over, smirked and rolled his eyes at the same time, finding his aloof smartass comfort zone, and jerked the Impala's door open. He exited the car slowly and pivoted even slower, resting his hands on the hood of the car, fingers laced together. If anyone was going to be doing the waiting, it was going to be him.

This young man opposite Dean wasn't Sammy, but Sam. He wasn't dressed in Dean's hand-me-downs – his big brother's clothes still too small for him – but newish looking jeans and a blue polo shirt. Dean strangely noted that he had never seen Sam wear anything like that, because he himself would not have been caught dead in such a thing. The smallest thing made it painfully clear he did not know this person standing across from him.

Eye contact wasn't made. Both sets instead roamed the landscape behind the other, evening traffic passing behind them, until Sam's eyes finally fell on the car in front of him, and he put a hand on the hood. "I missed this car."

Dean's eyes narrowed and he pulled away from the Impala with a snort. The sudden movement made Sam jump, offending hand going back to its pocket. "I, uh, I mean…" he stumbled.

Dean swallowed the sting of the words and bailed Sam out of the awkward situation he had created for himself. "Looks like you're packin' it on there, bud." He rounded the car and yanked open the trunk, pulling out his bag.

Sam's mouth quirked in a small smile. "It's called three meals a day, Dean. You should try it sometime." He raised a hand before Dean could reply. "Coffee isn't a meal."

Dean shouldered his duffle and slammed the trunk shut. He turned, mouth open, and Sam held up his other hand. "Neither is a candy bar."

Dean grinned sideways, much more outwardly convincing that what he actually felt, and lifted a shoulder at the building behind Sam. "Some dorm," he said flatly.

"It's not a dorm. I have an apartment." Sam half-turned and raised a hand at the obvious apartment building behind him.

Dean shrugged. "Yeah? With who?" _Please don't tell me we have to drag a roommate into this..._

"Ben."

_Shit. _He wasn't happy about that. "Ah. And you and…Ben, are you guys happy?" So, he did what he did, and turned it into a joke.

"He's my friend, jerk." Sam crossed his arms and eyed the bag over Dean's shoulder. "There aren't any weapons in there, right?"

Dean held up his hands as innocently as he could manage. "Innocent" wasn't exactly a look he had a lot of experience with. Sam sighed and jerked his head towards the apartment building. Dean followed him down the walkway. "Sam and Ben. You guys must just...be really boring."

* * *

Uncomfortable silence didn't even begin to describe the atmosphere in that small apartment in California. The hum of the air conditioning made it nearly unbearable. The three of them sat in at separate corners of the room, staring at each other. Sam had a dropping feeling this was going to happen a lot.

Introductions had been made, and Dean had surprised him by being – almost – normal. He'd forgotten the way Dean could just turn it on and off like that, putting a complete stranger at ease, though that was usually women. He'd shaken Ben's hand when it had been stuck out at him, and now sat on the couch, hands on his knees, gaze drifting around the apartment, taking in and analyzing Sam's new lifestyle, occasionally squinting or wincing, all of it hitting Sam like a blow as he resisted the urge to swivel around and see just what it was Dean had disapproved of.

His mouth was dry, but Sam didn't want to make any sudden movements by standing to get a glass of water. The others in the room each had information they were holding silently over Sam's head, and he had thought through this scenario a dozen times already.

Ben: _You know, in the whole time I've known him, Sam never mentioned he had a brother._

Dean: _Yeah? He ever mention how he's spent his whole life hunting demons and the like?_

They were both being good and quiet, and Sam would really like it if they stayed that way, even if it was making him twitchy. Every shooting glance at Dean as he took in the Van Gogh print hanging by the door – '_Starry Night,' Sam? What the hell were you thinking? – _and he had had that feeling all over again, that tugging in his gut that said, _Sam, he's pissed at you. Really, really pissed, and he's going to make this as hard on you as he can._

Dean met his eyes and it was almost as thought he could read Sam's mind. He smirked. "So, Sammy. Why is it that you called me out here?"

Sam attempted to kill his brother with his eyes, and when that didn't work he continued glaring at Dean as he spoke to Ben. "Ben, could you give us a minute?"

Ben's gaze traveled from brother to brother before he nodded, slowly rising from his seated position, backwards on a chair from the kitchen. "Sure. Got that big test coming up, should probably turn in anyway." He pushed the chair back up to the small table and faced them again. "It was nice to meet you, Dean." There was something cold in Ben's voice. He clearly had a problem with Dean being there, which Sam found he was okay with.

Dean looked up, eyes bright and unblinking, in that sizing-up the competition way, and it put Sam even more on edge. "Yeah," Dean said, nodding. "Yeah, you, too. Ben."

Sam knew he was going to have to keep the two apart, keep them from talking without him there to mediate. Ben would want to _know_, and Dean would be all too willing to share. To make this life just as hard for Sam as he had tried to tell him it would be.

As soon as Ben's bedroom door shut, Sam whirled on his brother. 'What the hell, Dean?"

Dean only frowned and jerked a thumb in the direction Ben had just exited. "You haven't told that kid anything?"

"No, Dean, I haven't. Because this isn't the kind of thing that's important in my life anymore."

Dean didn't rise to the fight. He sat back against the couch cushions and ran a tired hand over his face. "You started to say something on the phone earlier about a connection between the…are we calling them victims?"

Sam spoke as he went into his bedroom to retrieve the notebook he'd been taking notes in. "They _are_ victims. And yes, I found a connection. All of the occurrences happened in or around two buildings. Maxwell and Owen Halls." Sam laid out a small campus map on the coffee table and tapped a spot. "They're right next to each other."

Dean leaned back, eyebrows raised. "Okay, well, you figured that out without me. Why am I here?"

Sam's eye shifted and his head twitched. "Well, that's as far as I got."

Dean put his hands on the table. "Okay. Did you look into the history of the buildings? Past hauntings or sightings on campus? Any of that research-y crap?" Sam stared dumbly down at the map. "Come on, Sam, you're the geek, not me."

"Look, Dean, I just – "

"You just didn't want to do this. I get it." Dean smirked and stood, moving around to the back of the couch, where he laid his hands, bracing his arms. "You wanted me to come and do your dirty work for you."

"It's not like that."

"Then what's it like, Sam? This should be a cakewalk for you. You're tellin' me you're up against a wall and you haven't even researched the buildings' histories? This isn't you."

Sam felt something inside himself snap, and he stepped forward, unable to stop himself. "No, it's not _me. Me _should be studying for my chem exam, or watching TV! This is just the last thing I want to be doing right now."

Muffled sounds came from the other side of the wall separating Ben's room, his way of letting them know they were getting loud, and that he was still there.

Dean was once again refusing to make eye contact, was shaking his head and staring off at a spot near the window. Sam sighed. "I'm sorry." He moved back to the coffee table, stooped to grab his notebook and held it out. "We should figure this out."

Dean took his time bringing his attention back to Sam, and when he did, his eyes narrowed at the notebook in Sam's hand. "Sam, you want me to have my entire life come to a stop to help you out? At least let me get a night's sleep first."

Sam nodded in short bobs and brought his arm back, replacing the map within the pages. "Yeah, yeah. You're right. I didn't…I'm sorry."

Dean shook it off, like he shook off so much. "Don't be sorry, just point me to the john."

Maybe it wasn't only good for him to have gotten out of there, but good for Dean, too. Sam didn't deserve a brother like Dean.

* * *

Sam was still standing in the same spot when Dean returned from the bathroom, and from raiding the bathroom. He had to say he was a little concerned to find not as much as a pocketknife anywhere in the small room. It was almost as though the kid was raised by someone other than John Winchester. Who was to say you wouldn't be attacked while taking a piss?

Sam saw him and glanced around the room like a little lost child, like he hadn't thought at all about where he was going to put Dean once he got there. "I, uh, I guess you can…"

Hopeless. He was just completely hopeless. Dean had a nagging feeling that he was going to be spending the night in the pantry, folded in half between canned vegetables and boxes of off-brand mac & cheese.

"Here." Ben reentered the room, expression cold but arms laden with a pillow and blanket from his room.

Peace offering? The face didn't really lend support to that theory. Sam's bestest pal and new personal savior? That seemed more likely, though Dean had to admit, he didn't really know just how a bestest pal of Sam would look. He hadn't ever had real friends before, not for more than a few months at a time. Dean didn't want to give this kid the upper hand, but he didn't want to sleep on the floor, either. He accepted the items Ben more or less dumped into his arms and dropped them onto the couch.

"Oh, okay. Yeah. That works." The subtitles read _duh. _Sam was bumbling around like, well, like a bumbling idiot. Dean definitely had the upper hand there, no question about it. This was hard for him, sure, harder than there were words for, but Dean was twenty-odd years trained in keeping the hard from making its way out, from making itself visible. Sam was just so out there, so heart-on-his-sleeve _out there_. And so he was a bumbling idiot while Dean watched with a cocked eyebrow, amused.

Dean plopped down next to the pillow and blanket, pulling off his boots. He had a sudden understanding how it felt to be a caged animal as he realized Sam was staring at him from a few feet away, and Ben was staring at them from the doorway of his room. He looked up questioningly. "I got a second head sprouting or what?"

Sam shifted his weight. "No, just…" He shot a look at Ben, who understood and backed into his room, letting the door fall closed behind him. "You didn't call Dad. Right? I mean, I know you said…but – "

"Jesus, Sam. No." Dean flung his left boot off forcefully, sending it thudding against a leg of the coffee table.

Sam took a step back, consciously or not, he did, and Dean sighed. "No, Sam. I didn't call Dad." _He's gonna just the right side of kill me when he finds out about this, but I didn't call him. Hope it's worth it, dumbass._

"Okay. Thanks," he added, almost as an afterthought. He ran a hand through his hair and let out a small laugh. "How about this, huh. You ever think you'd see the day?"

"No," Dean answered honestly. You know, all wishful thinking aside.

"Me, neither." It was just as brutally honest, a testament to just what the last two years had done to their relationship. "I guess I'll see you in the morning."

"I'm not goin' anywhere."

Sam nodded and started across the room to his own bedroom. He paused with a hand on the doorframe, tapping his fingers on the wood. "Thanks. You know, for that, too."

Dean's left eye twitched. "I'm not the one who leaves."

Sam pursed his lips, gave a curt nod. All things considered, he took it better than anything else Dean had said, like he had been expecting it all along.

And maybe he was. He certainly should have.

* * *

To be continued...


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

"_What Dad 'wants' doesn't matter!"_

"_You see that? That attitude there? That's why I always got the extra cookie."_

_Thursday_

It was cooler in the morning, a light down blanket of fog encircling buildings and trees up and down the street, shafts of sunlight breaking through in a spotty pattern. It was deceptively quiet, for all of the inner roaring going on inside Sam's head. A dog barked outside, accompanied by the frantic, high-pitched calling of its owner – "_Pepe, no!" – _as it presumably took off after a rogue squirrel. The barking set off a chain reaction down the street, and over the windowpane-dulled cacophony of student-owned canines Sam thought, _that's more like it._

Upon waking, it had taken Sam a few moments to remember things weren't exactly the way they had been only the day before, and Dean was there. He was actually _there._

And then there was a quick moment of intertwined panic and a surprising sense of relief, because, maybe, Dean _wasn't _there. In the living room he would find a neatly stacked pillow and blanket, topped with a note: See ya, sucka. He would hear the laughter in his head, and he wouldn't be the least bit surprised, something which he was sure to feel guilty for later on.

Wishful thinking, perhaps, because Dean had never neatly stacked anything in his life, the exception being the occasional tower of empty beer cans.

He didn't have to check the time, as a sudden pang behind his left eye told Sam it was too early in the morning for all this thinking.

Sam opened his bedroom door and allowed his eyes to adjust to the darkness still plaguing the living room. The curtains were thick enough to keep the bright early morning sun out of the room, perfect for those weekends spent sleeping in, and it seemed Ben had yet to emerge to draw them open. And that brought Sam back around to, _oh, yeah, Dean's out here. _How it still hit him as a surprise was beyond him.

Waking Dean wasn't on Sam's list of fun things to do, so he avoided anything having to do with actually touching his brother and decided to let the sun take the brunt of the punishment. He moved over to the drawstring on the curtains and yanked them open, so as to make it as quick and painless as possible. The sunlight spilled out onto an unoccupied couch, rumpled blanket shoved to the edge of the couch, hanging over the arm and trailing on the floor.

Sam's shoulders fell, and he let out a breath. "So much for not being the one who leaves," he muttered.

The handle on the front door rattled, drawing Sam's attention, and it jerked open, startling him. What startled him more was the sight of a fully awake and dressed Dean entering the apartment, to-go coffee cup from the gas station on the corner in hand. Sam blinked.

So did Dean. "Morning, Sunshine. Went out for some coffee." He lifted a shoulder at the door behind him. "I left it open."

"It's a safe neighborhood," Sam said, not sure what he meant by it, or if he meant anything at all.

"Of course it is."

He had that look, the one he'd had the night before, sizing Ben up. That bright-eyed, unblinking, _of course you do, _look. It was a challenge, because Dean didn't know how to do anything else with a stranger. Sam took a deep breath, really feeling it this time. This is how Dean saw him, as a stranger. Sam didn't see this, Sam saw _Dean._ The same old Dean, making everything hard and making it look so easy to do so. He'd seen less than two hours of his brother, and he'd had enough. "Look, Dean. Is this how it's gonna be? All these little snips and asides? Picking a fight every chance we get?"

Then Dean did something surprising. He set his paper coffee cup on the breakfast bar and let out a breath, as if he was releasing the tension Sam had just taken in. "No. I don't want it to be. I just…"

"I'm sorry, too."

Dean held up his hands. "Who says I was apologizing?"

The conversation ended there, and Sam let it, because his apology had been just as half-assed as Dean's retort had been scathing. He'd noticed the singular cup as soon as he'd entered the room; he just didn't know what it meant, whether Dean had purposefully neglected to get a cup for Sam or if he had honest to God just not thought about it. Just not thought about _him_.

Dean plopped onto a stool at the tall counter separating the living room from the small kitchen, his eyes roaming over the room just as they had the night before, though this time more thoroughly. He smirked over Ben's cardboard Han Solo standing guard by the front door, squinted as he read titles on the bookshelf next to the entertainment center, mouthing some he was maybe unfamiliar with, and it wasn't lost on Sam that Dean had clearly noticed and was hurt by the fact there was a distinct lack of any visible evidence Sam ever had a life other than the one he was currently living, and he couldn't help taking all of this in with a smug, _good_.

Sam was defensive with his posture and eyes, and Dean was armed with an easy grin, clearly on the offensive as he took in the room, looking for anything he could use as either a weapon or to ease the tension. Maybe both. He was good at that. There wasn't an obstacle Dean Winchester couldn't hurdle when he had that smile and something he could make a joke of.

This probably explained the sudden triumphant look on his face and the way he made his way over to the bookcase. Strutted. He pulled a thick textbook from the top shelf and turned to Sam with that cocky smile. "Dude. You took a mythology class? Isn't that kinda like the Mexican kid taking Spanish as his foreign language in high school?"

Sam finally moved from where he had been standing, crossed the room in long strides and ripped the textbook out of his hands, taking whatever small victory Dean had hoped to claim along with it. "It's _Greek _mythology."

Dean continued grinning, unfazed. "Okay."

"It's not…"

"What? Demons and stuff?"

"Yeah." It sounded pathetic, even to Sam's ears. He stared down at the cover of the book: an etching of Perseus beheading Medusa. Medusa, the snake-haired _demon_.

Dean grinned, relishing in Sam's discomfort. "It's gods and stuff."

"Yeah."

"Maybe just a coupla demons thrown in the mix?"

"You're enjoying this way too much."

"What'd you get in the class?"

"I'm not talking to you anymore." Sam replaced the book and stalked out of the room. "I'm getting dressed."

Dean followed him across the living room, all the way to the bedroom door that snapped closed in his face. "Seriously, what'd you get in the class?"

* * *

"Rachel Spitzer? Hi, I'm Sam, with the _Daily_."

Rachel's blonde hair was stringy; not necessarily unwashed, but certainly unkempt. There were circles under her eyes as though she wasn't sleeping, and considering what she'd been through, she probably wasn't. She glared at Sam through the crack she'd opened in the doorway, hostile and suspicious. "I already talked to someone with the paper a couple of weeks ago."

"Oh, I know. This is more of a follow-up interview."

"So you can humiliate me twice? No, thanks."

The door started to close and Sam stuck a hand out. "Rachel, please. It's just a couple of questions. And I promise you, you're not going to be humiliated."

The girl shook her head and continued to shut the door. Fully aware of the shit he was going to catch, Sam knew he was going to have to really turn it on for this girl to even get her to let them in the door, let alone actually talk to them. They were oh for two, and Sam was left with no choice. The eyebrows went up, and the lips pressed together. "Rachel, please, just a moment of your time."

She stared at Sam and shook her head, relenting. "I'll give you five minutes."

Sam stepped forward, and Rachel seemed to notice Dean standing in the hallway for the first time.

"You're with the paper, too?"

"God, no," Dean said with a shake of the head.

Sam elbowed him. "Yes, he is."

"Yeah," Dean amended quickly. "I love…writing for the paper. The, uh, _Stanford…Paper."_

"_Daily?" _Rachel supplied.

"Yeah. The _Stanford Daily. _Love it._"_ After a moment he added, "I'm new."

Rachel cocked an eyebrow appraisingly then stepped back. "Five minutes," she said harshly, holding up a splayed hand for emphasis.

"I just said it," Sam hissed as they entered the dorm room.

"Like I was listening to you," Dean shot back in an equally hushed tone.

The mark on her ankle looked as though it was a scar that had been there for years. Two raised pink spots white-ringed in the shape of the mouth of the snake that had clearly latched itself onto her leg. Not just bitten, but _latched. _

"And you saw a doctor about this?" Sam leaned in closer from his seat in Rachel's hot pink disk chair, close enough that even Dean felt uncomfortable and kneed him in the side from his own navy blue vinyl video rocker.

Rachel laughed bitterly and wrenched her leg away from Sam's probing eyes. "Yeah, the nurses in the ER asked me why I waited weeks to come in about a snake bite."

"It was…" Dean prompted, exchanging a look with Sam.

"The next morning, as soon as I saw the bite." Rachel tugged at the hem of her gray sweatpants, drawing the material over the mark. "I was kinda still hoping it was a dream until then."

"And it looked like this?"

Rachel sat up just a touch straighter, tucking her feet under the comforter on her bed, the defensive movement relaying her thoughts clear enough. Distrusting and suspicious, maybe even more so than when she had first opened the door. "You need to know all this for the paper?"

"We're thorough," Dean said with a grin.

"Yeah," she said, drawing out the word, eyes on Dean as her mouth talked to Sam. "This is what it looked like." She sighed, glancing down at the bulge in her bright polka-dotted cover that was her hidden feet. "Weird, huh?"

"You can say that again."

"Weird, huh?"

Sam looked up as Rachel smiled uneasily. She took in his serious expression, twin to the one Dean wore, and swallowed. "Something's going on, isn't it?"

Sam's brow furrowed. "We're not sure."

She let them out, possibly a touch more at ease than she'd been in days. Sam thanked her for her time, and _she _thanked _them_, which Sam didn't really get and sent a strange pang through his chest. He didn't want to see anyone else have to go through something like this.

Outside the closed door, Sam crossed his arms and leaned in conspiratorially. "Looks like something supernatural to me."

Dean shrugged, face impassive. "Looks like a snake bite to me."

"In a California dorm? You just don't want to see it."

"Or maybe you want to see it too much."

Sam frowned. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Dean ran a hand over his face and shook his head. "Nothing," he said after a moment. He jerked his head down the hall. "Let's go."

Sam squinted but turned to go, taking long, not so happy strides. Dean clapped him on the shoulder as they started down the narrow dorm corridor. "I gotta hand it to ya, Sammy, you're a natural."

"Sam," he said harshly, stopping short so that Dean nearly walked into his back. "And don't say that."

* * *

The rest of the morning passed quite uneventfully, with Dean skimming articles as Sam sheepishly printed them off of a library computer, ribbing him the entire time about how much he was lacking in the research department, and wasn't he supposed to be the smart one, college boy? Sam didn't seem to appreciate the jokes. It was almost too easy getting the history of the involved buildings, considering that Sam hadn't even thought to look. After Dean had his fill of some pretty boring information and most of a bag of Doritos, they headed back out.

Yellow crime scene tape roped off about half of the courtyard on the west side of Maxwell Hall, looped around and strung between several of the skinny, budding trees that dotted the area, brushing the tops of the bushes lining the sidewalk to the building. The tape flapped in the breeze, and the effect was incredibly creepy against the afternoon's already dreary gray landscape. The sun of the morning had slowly faded throughout the day, along with Dean's mood. He squinted up at the sky; wasn't it supposed to be sunny here in California?

This was without a doubt the most boring part of this job. He didn't even need his gun. Across the quad, Sam was thanking and moving away from a student he had been questioning, his deep-in-thought face on as he walked slowly along the length of the yellow tape. The subtext of this face usually, or as far as he remembered, meant _leave me alone, Dean_, and so Dean was keeping his distance, studying the facades of what he had to admit were two creepy-ass buildings after completing a few cursory interviews of his own. "Geez, Sammy," Dean had commented, "I thought you ran away to Stanford, not Hogwarts."

"That was awfully nerdy of you," Sam had replied without eye contact.

Dean had huffed and stalked away. Huge and made of stone, and looking very out of place, Maxwell Hall was covered in decades worth of ivy and lord knew what else, and had, according to the articles Sam had supplied for Dean, been the old psychology research building built during J. E. Wallace Sterling's tenure as university president in the forties, hastily constructed with dwindling funds, along with neighboring Owen Hall as an additional dormitory to increase admissions. In the seventies, however, the building's funds and resources were down-sized due to cost control and budget-cutting. Under President Lyman's "Campaign for Stanford" psychology research was redirected to a brand-new and much more modern building, and Maxwell Hall had stood empty ever since. That is, until Brandon Perry had decided to take a swan dive off of the roof.

Owen Hall was the dormitory in which Rachel had been bitten by a phantom snake and Nicole had had her haunted shower experience, equally creepy in its vine coated exterior, despite the fact that students still inhabited it. One of the two buildings was definitely the epicenter of the Stanford brand of strange. Dean's guess was a ghost of some kind, but with the distinct lack of pattern in the attacks, he still needed more information, which really pissed him off.

Brandon's body had been discovered about forty feet from where he was currently standing, which was as close as he could get to the yellow tape without drawing attention to himself. He hadn't thought of making a fake student ID, hadn't really had the time, and so he had nothing to produce that wouldn't have him kicked off the quad, if not the campus, if it looked like he was lurking around a crime scene.

The police were calling Brandon's death a freak accident. It had originally been ruled a suicide, but pressure from the kid's wealthy and influential family had that changed in the media coverage. And then there was this newest development, something Dean had learned from talking to some of the kid's friends. Brandon Perry had had a very pronounced fear of heights.

"Dude couldn't even _look _at a roller coaster."

"Never made it off the high dive back in high school."

"Big fan of road trips…not so much with the flying."

And sure, Dean could understand that.

Every person quoted in the newspapers or sound bited on the six o' clock news said there was no reason for Brandon to have been on that rooftop, despite the fact it was an abandoned and _locked_ building. Weird, sure, but evidence of something more up his alley? It just didn't make sense, but not necessarily in the way that supported Sam's haunting theory. It didn't make sense in the way that said to Dean, there's nothing you can do here.

Almost as if he sensed Dean's increasing hesitancy with the case, Sam looked up suddenly from his brooding, glanced around the quad until he spotted Dean and made a beeline towards him. Dean sighed, wondering if he was going to be able to get out of this when he was already so far into it. He knew Sam was feeling guilty over the fact a kid had died, but Dean just wasn't getting any supernatural vibes.

"Something's definitely going on here, Dean," Sam said quietly and urgently as soon as he was within earshot. "It doesn't make any sense for Brandon Perry to have been in that building. He was afraid of heights."

"Yeah, I got that, too. But, Sam, this…" Dean looked away, at the building behind him, ran a hand over his face. "This seems like your everyday, run-of-the-mill angsty coed suicide."

"There are a dozen ways he could have killed himself if that were the case. Why jump off of an abandoned building?"

"Maybe he just wanted to get over his fear before he died, you know?"

"Dean – "

"Dad's on my ass, Sammy. He's called me five times today, telling me to get my ass out there." Okay, so Sam didn't need to know he was embellishing the truth just a little. Okay, a lot. Dean had been OCD with checking his phone all day, and hadn't received a single call which, in all honestly, scared him. Just a little of _where the hell's Dad now_ panic, but it was there.

"Only five times, huh. He's pissed."

Dean grunted. Was the kid reading his mind or what? "No kidding. I'm giving it another day before he pretends I don't exist."

The lightness of his tone had the opposite of its expected result on Sam. He squinted and stuffed his hands in his pockets. Rubbed at the back of his neck and focused on a spot in the middle of the leaves on an oak tree behind Dean. "Then give it another day."

"What?"

"Seriously. If it'll get him off your case, maybe you should – "

"Sammy, no."

And, surprisingly enough, Sam didn't correct him this time. He didn't let it go, though. "Just…give me tonight, Dean." He glanced up at Maxwell Hall, looming like a decrepit cartoon castle over their heads. Dean kind of felt like he was stuck inside a Mario Nintendo game. "I know there's something supernatural going on here. I wouldn't have called you if I didn't."

Dean had to admit, he had him there.

"We'll sweep the place," Sam continued, "and if nothing registers, I won't be mad if you want to take off."

Dean agreed. Because in the end, he didn't know how to say no to Sammy, and whether it was purposeful or not, when he asked, he was Sammy. Not Sam.

* * *

_Thud._

Sam didn't know where he had found it, whether Dean had discovered it under the heap of ratty, abandoned running shoes in the farthest corner of his closet or had carried it into his apartment on his person, but Sam was going to _murder_ his brother if he threw that bouncy ball one more time.

_Thud._

The ball connected with the wall just to the left of Sam's head, and he jerked away. He glared up at Dean, who quirked his eyebrows from his seat on a stool at the breakfast bar. Dean put the ball on the counter, and Sam returned his attention to his note-covered printouts of the articles he had found that day.

_Thud. _

"Dean!"

"What? It's already after ten. Don't you need your beauty sleep or something?" _Let's get a move on_, he meant.

Sam held out his hand. "Give it."

"Hey, finder's keeper's."

So he _had _been digging around in his stuff. Dean was stealthy as hell; Sam didn't even know when he had found the time. He wagged his fingers: _now_. Dean sighed like a kicked puppy but crossed the room to hand the ball over. It seemed too far to walk all the way back the stool, so he flopped into the armchair a closer three feet away. He tapped his fingers restlessly on the arms of the chair until Sam shot him another glare. His fingers stilled.

"You wanna go grab a beer?"

Sam sighed and didn't look up. "I can't go get a beer, Dean."

"Right." Beat. "You want me to buy you some beer?"

There was a dull thump and "_ow" _from the wall behind Dean, as though Ben had jumped up and hit his desk. Sam's glare shifted to the wall and he warned loudly, "Dean."

"Come on, Sammy."

"Sam."

"Yeah."

_Thud. _

Sam's head whipped up as a smaller ball thumped the wall inches from his right ear. _What the hell? _

Dean was all innocence, grinning and swiveling in the chair.

_Fine. _Sam just short of growled as he set his papers aside. Dean propped his feet up on the coffee table. They stared at each other, listening to the wall clock ticking from the kitchen.

"So," Sam said slowly. "How are you and Dad?"

"We're good." It was too quick and too clipped. You would have never thought he knew it was coming, obligatory and stiff in its delivery. The question had been hanging in the air since Sam had first made that call. There was so much he had missed, so much he didn't know.

"Yeah?" Even though he knew he was asking for it.

"Great."

"Really."

"We took a few days last month, went down to Cancun. Turns out, Dad's not that great a swimmer. Man can sure hold his tequila though, but you know that. Oh, we eat out a lot, really nice places – "

"Okay, Dean."

" – and Dad joined a bowling league. He keeps tryin' to get me to come along, but it's just not my thing, you know? Oh, and Thursday's Game Night. Sometimes, we play Scrabble – "

"I get it, Dean."

"Do you, Sam?" Dean's boots moved from the coffee table to the floor with a heavy thud. "Because as bad as you think things were, it got a hell of a lot worse after you left."

That was unexpected. Weren't things supposed to be better without him? Isn't that what John had told him. "What?"

"Nothin'."

"I tried to call – "

"You called once, Sam."

"Yeah, and you didn't pick up."

_Thud_.

That was again from the other room, and more than a knee into a desk; that was a book slamming shut. A big book. That was the sign of increasing volume and rising tension, all of which was sure to culminate in a swinging fist or two and Ben didn't want to be anywhere around when that finally happened. Sam and Dean exchanged a look.

The kid emerged from his room, moving quickly towards the front door without meeting either brother's eyes. "I think I'm just gonna study at the library. It's…there are books…there, at the library. Books that I need, and don't have here…" Ben fumbled with the strap of his book bag and juggled his keys and several psychology books as he worked his way across the room, avoiding all eyes.

As soon as the door awkwardly clicked shut with an equally awkward "_See ya later, Sam_," Dean clapped his hands. "Well, that got rid of him."

Sam stood and went to the coat closet by the door, pulling out the weapons bag Dean had stashed earlier in the day. He felt dirty having it in his home. "I could have just asked him to leave."

"Where's the fun in that?" Dean crouched by the bag and started to pull items out, holding each up for inspection before replacing it.

Sam leaned against the door, staring at his shoes. "Why didn't you pick up?"

Dean paused for just the slightest of seconds, looked at an unmarked spot in the closet in front of him. This hadn't been rehearsed. None of the "fight" had really been _rehearsed_, but they had known what the goal was, and the place they were going to have to go to get there. _No point in sugar coating now. _"Because I was mad at you, Sammy." He went back to rummaging through his bag, and Sam didn't say anything else.

* * *

Of course.

Of course it was a full moon. Because the whole situation just wasn't creepy enough without the large oak trees of the courtyard laced eerily with pure white light, catching every rustling leaf. Anyone else in the whole wide world would have the nerve to think that it looked cool, or beautiful in that baby-making, nothing beats the whole-grain greatness of nature way. Not Sam, he knew a full moon meant a few things, none of them having to do with anything cool or beautiful, and he found it almost hard to believe he didn't know it was going to be one, wondered how long it had been since he stopped keeping track of the lunar cycles.

As they drew nearer to the buildings, Dean acknowledged the creepiness of the natural lighting with a tilt of his head, and a loud, "Huh."

Lamps lighting the pathways around and across the quad and up to the front of Owen provided some sense of danger of being caught breaking into such a potential crime scene, but the lights actually affixed to the front of the abandoned Maxwell Hall had long since been cut of power, and the overhang of the building provided cover from the threatening spillover of the full moon.

Aside from the soft swish of their shoes on the grass, the _ch-ch-ch _of several sprinklers was the only noise. They sidestepped a few puddles left along the edges of the sidewalk, and Sam noticed one sprinkler in particular, spinning in hyperactive circles, with every rotation shooting water into the air like a swiped fire hydrant. Around the defunct sprinkler, a large ring of grass reflected the moon in bladey ripples.

The front doors of Maxwell Hall were still locked, a thick chain linking the ornate, heavy handles together, making entrance a near impossibility for anyone who wasn't quite them. Especially a random student, unless he had otherworldly means. Sam made sure Dean received one hell of a pointed look as he shook the chain and lock. "Locked."

"Thanks for that, Sherlock." Dean didn't even meet his eyes, making the pointy-ness of his look more like pointless, as he backed away from the doors and squinted up at the building as though he were going to pull a Spider-man. He didn't, instead rounding the corner, pulling at the edges of the boards covering the lowest row of windows, testing them. The middle board on the third window creaked and pulled forward from the frame when Dean tugged on it, and he turned to Sam, who was watching him with his hands stuffed in his jacket pockets.

Dean dropped his bag to the ground and raised his eyebrows at the board he had just pulled on. Sam rolled his eyes but complied, removing his hands from the warm comfort of his pockets to continue prying the board from the window frame. Once past the board, Sam could see there was no longer glass in the frame, as his fingers met the warm, stale air trapped within the building.

Dean was next to him, practically shouldering him out of the way as he hoisted himself inside first, hands flat on the stone ledge under the window. Once he was on the other side, Dean didn't turn to give Sam a hand in through the window, instead reaching inside his jacket and pulling out a small flashlight. Sam saw the thin beam cutting through the dusty atmosphere as he pulled himself up. When he dropped to the floor, he brought up a cloud of dust and coughed lightly as he brought out his own flashlight and accepted the EMF meter Dean pulled from his bag. He recognized it immediately, one of Dad's, probably passed down to Dean at some point. It was the first time the thought occurred to him the remaining two Winchesters might not be so much of a team anymore.

There seemed to be as much dust in the corridor as there was oxygen, if not more, and Sam's eyes stung and watered almost immediately. Every small movement shot more of it up into his line of breathing, and the back of his throat was instantly coated in a grimy paste. A few feet in front of him, Dean coughed into his shoulder, experiencing the same.

"Upstairs, you think?" Sam asked, thick and low around the choking air. He definitely didn't miss the abandoned building aspects of the job.

Dean didn't answer right away, but shone his flashlight up and down the hall, illuminating only a fraction of their surroundings at a time. There wasn't much to reflect the light; the inner walls were made of the same large stone as the outside of the building, so it was mostly cobwebs the beam picked up. It was darker than dark, the only other light was the bit of natural moonlight coming in through slits in the boards.

He was a good thirty feet down the hall on the right now, towards the front of the building. Towards a set of stairs, most likely, but Sam remained rooted by the window they'd come in from, wondering if they were really working together here or he had become a drag-along. He was suddenly eleven years old again, waiting in the car with an earth science textbook.

Sam shifted his feet and paid for it as soon as he inhaled. "Dean?"

Dean paused just as he was rounding the corner as though he had forgotten Sam was even there. And for all he knew, maybe he had. If that was the case, he recovered quickly. He jerked his flashlight, brought it up so the beam hit Sam square in the eyes. "You coming?"

Sam squinted into the light and huffed, the puff of his breath visible in the bright white. Dean grinned widely and removed the beam, starting up the stairs on his right. Sam followed, peering into a few locked classrooms on his left as he made his way. He flipped the switch on the EMF and lifted it to one door, not really sure what he was looking for. The ghost of a former student, maybe? Someone who had died in the building, and, and…he guessed he wasn't all the great with the speculating anymore, because that's as far as he got before he was embarrassed with himself. And he knew then, for all the asshole that he could be, he needed Dean.

And an asshole, he could certainly be. Sam had always had a short fuse, and Dean had always known just how long to hold the match to make him blow and still have time to get to cover. As the two worked their way slowly through the second-floor corridors, Dean repeatedly clicked the button on the bottom of his flashlight, flicking the beam on and off and on and off and on and off until Sam finally snapped, turning around and ripping it out of his hand. "Would you cut it out?"

Dean grabbed it right back. "What crawled up your butt?"

"Nothing crawled up my butt, Dean. We're on a hunt."

Dean snorted, a venomous smile on his face. He switched on the light again, brought it up to Sam's face interrogation-style. "I thought you don't hunt anymore."

Sam smacked the light away. "I don't."

"Man, have you got issues."

Sam whirled on him. "Yeah, maybe I do. And you know where they all come from?"

Dean gripped his arm. "You say 'Dad' and I'll knock your ass out right here."

Sam clenched his jaw and glared back, psyching himself up to do it. He couldn't. He wrenched his arm out of Dean's solid grip and stalked down the corridor, sweeping his flashlight beam in an aggravated arc.

There was only the briefest of noticeable pauses before he heard Dean's boots stomping after him. "And another thing – "

_Beep. _A crackle of static, and both Winchesters stopped and looked down at the EMF forgotten in Sam's hand. The lights were all red. Dean leaned back on his heels and glanced around at both sides of the hallway. He wagged his fingers at Sam until he handed over the EMF, and backtracked a few steps, waving the instrument to the left and right, whatever it was he was going to say having gone completely from his mind.

As his arm crossed a doorway on their left, the lights on the instrument came to life again, and the brothers moved to flank the door without a word between them.

Dean reached over and tested the knob, which turned easily with a creak. He frowned and nudged the door open. It swung into a completely bare room. A blackboard hung from the wall on their left, a large window on the far wall, but other than that there was nothing more than their constant companion, years and years of dust.

"It's not boarded up," Sam said, throwing an arm in the direction of the window.

"Yeah, I doubt they were betting on students scaling a stone face to break in here." Dean walked around the perimeter of the room, watching the EMF as he moved it back and forth. All seemed quiet now, lights dim and meter resting. When he had circled the whole room and made it back to Sam, he shrugged. "Could've been a glitch."

Sam shook his head. "Something's definitely going on here, Dean." He tapped the instrument in his brother's hand. "EMF. Strange deaths."

"No EMF now." Dean waved it in Sam's face to back it up. "And strange _death_, actually," he added smartly.

Sam shook his head. He grabbed the meter from Dean's hand and started out of the room. "I'm checking the rest of the floor."

"Oh, don't go and get your panties in a twist, Sammy," Dean called after him. "If you're that concerned, we could always just burn the whole building done," he joked.

The only warning Sam got that there was something in the building with them that maybe didn't take such jokes too well was a whisper along the stone walls, the feeling of a presence racing past him. He jumped, almost tripped, and turned at the same moment the EMF lights glowed a bright red.

Years and years, the better part of a lifetime of experience told him exactly where it was headed, whatever it was. He was in the doorway, only feet away, when Dean was thrown back.

There was only the faintest thud when Dean's body connected with the glass of the window, a single moment's resistance, then a crack, a crash, a yell, and in a spray of glass and a frantic windmilling of arms, Dean was gone.

* * *

To be continued...


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Five

"_In two years, something great's gonna happen."_

"_What?"_

"_College. You'll be able to get out of that house and away from your dad__."_

_Sante Fe, New Mexico, 1996_

Dean was walking funny; that's what tipped Sam off.

Not that Dean didn't tend to strut, swagger, or have an otherwise general disregard for what passed as normal, but this was just barely walking at all; more of a…dragging lurch, really. In the way that he was very literally dragging his right leg and hopping forward on his left, keeping as much of his weight on that leg as he could and kicking up little puffs of red dust from the toe of his shoe as a result. It raised a red flag, sounded an alarm, and made Sam think now: yeah, okay, Dean might have been stumbling a bit on the way to the car. That desk had taken him out pretty hard; okay, _really _hard, but he'd seen his brother walk away from a hell of a lot worse, and Dean wasn't one to make a show out of a few scrapes and bruises.

But then Dean's arm came up to catch his weight on the frame of the door with a smack that seemed to have a visual echo into the dark motel room, and he listed to the side. One quick glance at his face and Sam was amazed he had made it so far from the car. Dean's eyes had taken on a kind of glazed, faraway look, trying to focus on something in the room, something over Sam's shoulder, and then he started to sag, "faraway" turning to _alright…that friggin' hurts_.

Sam jumped forward but Dad was quicker, was there behind Dean already, on his way in from the car, and he caught him under the arms before he made it all the way to the floor. Dean's legs slid out in front of him and he kicked clumsily, trying to get his footing back. The weapons bag John had been carrying slipped down his arm and clunked when it struck the thin carpeting and layer of cement underneath. He looked up at Sam with narrowed eyes, annoyance with his youngest son seeming to overtake concern for his eldest.

"Would you help me get him out of the goddamned doorway?" he snapped. "Now might be good, before someone sees."

Sam was just starting to really sprout and it was becoming more apparent every day he was going to clock in at a good few inches taller than his older brother. Dean had all that muscle, though, where Sam was still skinny, and John staggered a bit as he tried to haul Dean into something of an upright position. Sam hurried over and pulled an arm over his shoulder, dragging a wincing Dean fully into the room while John used his free hand to pull the door shut behind them. Dean did more to hinder their progress than to help, sneakers scratching across the carpet as he continued to wriggle, trying to regain his balance and get out of his father's grip until John's fingers tightened around his upper arms, digging in. He stilled, but didn't look particularly happy about it.

They'd taken the Rawhead out okay enough, the three of them. There had just been a hitch in the form of a decent-sized desk in its path on the way to the ground, and in all the commotion the heavy piece of furniture had taken Dean out at the knees in a cloud of dust as it and he crashed to the basement floor. He'd acted more embarrassed than hurt at the time, waving off the hands up, but it was obvious now there was something seriously wrong with his right leg. Dean was getting damn good at this downplaying thing; it wasn't often, or ever, both Sam and John missed something like this.

By the dingy yellow glow of the parking lot lighting filtering in through the slits in the blinds John let Dean slide into the chair by the door and he looked up, the embarrassment having returned to his significantly more alert eyes. He shrugged off the hands on his shoulders, narrowed his eyes unnecessarily at Sam. "I'm fine, Dad, I just…"

"Fell over?" Sam supplied helpfully and from a safe distance, the shadows of the room hiding his smirk. Dean glared daggers as John dropped to his knees, hands patting down Dean's right leg.

"Lights," John barked. Sam obliged, making sure no part of his body came within swinging distance of Dean as he flipped on the table lamp. Dean, who mouthed threats over John's ducked head as he continued his quick examination.

"Dad, come on, there's nothing worth – "

Dean's words were cut off by a harsh intake of breath as John's hands brushed his jeans leg just below his right knee. He immediately jerked the leg away, or attempted to; John held it in place and stuck the fingers from both hands into a hole in the jeans right around the spot he'd been touching. He ripped the material straight down to the hem, eliciting a groan from Dean. "Dad, these didn't even have any blood on 'em yet."

"S'cause you're lucky, kid," John said gruffly, looking up to meet Dean's eyes. He sat back on his heels, removing the shadows from the area and allowing Dean to see for himself.

It was not a pleasant sight. Despite the veritable palette of bruises there, the kneecap was clearly out of place, a sharp ess curve in Dean's leg, and it made Sam nauseous just looking at it. "I'm gonna be sick," he said quietly.

"Well, after you're through, would you maybe help me out here, Sam?" John shot a look up at Dean. "Probably made it worse by tryin' to walk on it." He found a spot low on Dean's calf and pressed down. "You feel that?"

Dean stared, probably debating whether or not he should lie. John pressed harder, and his lack of wince told all that was needed to know.

He gripped the bottom of Dean's shoe and squinted, letting his son know that compliance was not an option. "Move your foot up and down."

Dean did so.

"In and out."

He was able to do that, too, and John reached up to pat him on the shoulder, not showing it if he was feeling any of the relief Sam was. "Probably no nerve damage. Just tore the ligaments. We'll put it right and getcha some ice."

Dean nodded grimly, knowing all of the implications. "Good thing they got cable here," he joked.

He couldn't take it anymore. "Since when are you a knee dislocation expert?" Sam blurted from his spot across the room, having not moved when his father asked him to.

"Looks like since now, Sammy," John said.

"What if he needs surgery?"

Dean frowned, not happy to be talked about like he wasn't there, but kept quiet, probably to keep from stoking the fire.

"He's gonna be fine," John gritted out. "Your feet stuck in the carpet or what?"

Sam didn't want to help his father put the joint back where it went, not when asked in that tone, and especially not in a dingy little room like this. Not with a plastic cactus in the corner and cracks in the wall and spiders on the ceiling. He wanted an ER and a local anesthetic for his brother, not the half-empty bottle of Jack he was technically too young to be drinking, which Sam pointed out even as he collected it and the first aid kit for his father.

"Medicinal purposes, Sammy," John replied with a distracted huff as he pulled out a roll of gauze and looked around the room for anything he could use as a splint. "Doesn't count."

"Yeah," Dean said with a swig and a smirk that dissolved into a grimace as John did…whatever it was he was doing. Sam couldn't bring himself to watch. Some morbid part of his brain wanted him to, the part that had been an ace at dissecting that frog in Mr. Carter's bio class, but the rational part just wanted this to not be happening here. He'd seen his dad put more than one finger back in its socket, a shoulder once, but to fix a knee that looked like that? Bent in all the wrong places? It seemed like a whole different league, and he wasn't sure there was really anything in their first aid kit useful for such bone relocation.

"Are you sure you should be doing this?" Sam asked, grimacing himself as he listened, back turned to the scene. Dean groaned, as if in agreement.

John's response was a sigh more frustrated than any words he could have spoken. It was a special sigh, reserved just for him, and he'd been hearing it a lot lately. Sam moved to the dresser and perched on the edge with a huff and crossed his arms.

He was really no stranger to underestimating John Winchester, and when a moderately-drugged Dean was propped up on the pillows of one of the motel beds awhile later, every one of his joints in its proper place, knee wrapped in ice and gauze and splintered pieces of what used to be the drawer of the nightstand, Sam made his apology. "I didn't think you could do it." More accurately, what passed for an apology in the straining relationship he and his father had these days; no apology at all.

John continued cleaning his guns from the other bed, didn't even look up. "Not the first time." His tone was clipped, tired, and not in the mood.

"Probably not the last time, either," Sam muttered. He was always in this mood, and he couldn't help it. It was just as much his father's fault as it was his. In Sam's eyes, maybe even more. They couldn't even walk past each other without it becoming a fight anymore.

John let the shotgun he was holding thump onto his knee, meeting Sam's glare with dark eyes. "If you've got something to say to me, young man, you damn well – "

"Guys."

Both turned, gearing up and ready to go. Now the center of all that seething attention, Dean lifted the remote control along with his tired eyes and with it made a quick gesture across his neck: cut it out.

"Rest," John commanded. He shot Sam a look that, to him, clearly stated: this is your fault because of your piss-poor attitude, inability to predict furniture obstructions in the workplace, and total wussiness when it comes to putting bones back where they belong.

Sam rolled his eyes and flopped on the bed near Dean's feet, careful not to jostle his right leg. "Whatever." He rolled to his stomach and crossed his arms, resting his chin.

He stared at the snowy television, not really watching the western Dean had on, but fully aware of his father's gaze, boring holes into the back of his head from across the small room.

What he wasn't aware of was Dean's gaze on them both with a hurt that went further than the bone-deep ache in his leg.

* * *

_Thursday_

The sight and sounds left Sam momentarily paralyzed; dumbfounded and gaping at the jagged hole in the window across the room and the space where Dean had just been. It seemed to last longer than it actually did, slivers of splintered glass catching the moonlight and floating to the floor in surreal slow motion, every _tinkle _against the cheap linoleum exaggerated in the long silence.

When glass littered the floor and not the air, Sam's muscles finally released, and time returned to normal speed. His flashlight dropped to the floor from lax fingers as he raced to the window, shoes crunching on the glass. He didn't hear it hit the ground, didn't hear the pop of the bulb as the light extinguished. There wasn't a safe place to lay his hands and brace himself without impaling his palms on the remaining edges of window in the frame, and Sam faltered a bit when he glanced down at the ground below. It wasn't as far a drop as his brain had imagined it to be, but it was plenty far enough, and Dean didn't seem to be moving.

_God. _Sam felt he was going to be sick. If not for the cool air blowing in his face, he might have been. He stuck a hand out and it smacked against the wall next to what remained of the window, and again he found himself immobile. _It's too far down. Way too far... _

The clouds shifted; it might have been a trick of the light, his mind, or a combination of both, but he could have sworn he saw Dean moving down there. It was enough to get Sam himself moving again, and he turned and raced out of the room, sprinting for where he remembered the staircase to be, the flashlight left forgotten in the literal and metaphorical dust.

He took the stairs two at a time and skidded to a crashing halt in front of the window through which they had entered. Sam wriggled through, landing awkwardly on the side of his left foot, recovered, bolted to the left and rounded the corner, nearly slipping on the wet grass. That damn full moon came in handy then, illuminating Dean's form, pale and still on the lawn between Maxwell and Owen Halls. Sam was afraid to call out to him, didn't want to draw attention if it hadn't been drawn already. Even at this late hour, there were lights on in a handful of the dorm room windows above them, but there weren't any heads poking out just yet. Sam swallowed back his shout, wanting to keep it that way, as he nearly flew the rest of the way to Dean's side.

When Sam thundered to a stop and practically fell on his hands and knees to the ground beside him, Dean was flat on his back, blinking hard and making horrible wheezing sounds. _Oh, God, his back. Busted ribs, gotta be._ But he was awake, and that was a good sign and more than Sam was expecting. _It was too far. _The scattered pieces of the broken window snagged at Sam's jeans, but his own discomfort was the farthest thing from his mind as he was suddenly shockingly aware of the dampness seeping into the knees, of the sucking sound when he shifted his weight on the grass.

_God, if that's blood…_

Sam found himself very nearly gasping for each of his own breaths, on the verge of full-blown panic and 'what the hell do I do?' If it was blood soaking into his jeans, then it was too much. His hands instantly moved to Dean, patting down his chest and sides while Dean frowned and tried to pull away, though he didn't seem all that certain what he was pulling away from, his eyes not quite focused.

"Dean, just…stop, man." Sam was practically begging, gripping the shoulder of Dean's jacket in an effort to keep him still. "Please, stop moving. I gotta – "

A cold and sudden shock, drops of water smacked Sam in the side of the face at the exact moment Dean made a spluttering sound from the ground. Sam blinked and darted his gaze left and right, looking for the source. When he found it, the watered-down grass under his sneakers squished innocently as Sam sat back on his heels and almost laughed.

Dean wiped a shaky hand over his face and blinked at Sam, seeming to notice him for the first time. "The hell?" he managed, voice gravelly.

"Busted sprinkler." Sam ran a hand over his damp knees, happy to find the substance coated there grainy and gummy. Mud, not blood. Who gave a shit that these jeans had set him back sixty dollars – it wasn't blood.

Dean swallowed, wincing, and let his eyes fall closed. "Just my luck."

"It probably saved your life, so, yeah. Just your luck." He leaned forward again, not really thinking as he covered Dean in shadow, just hearing the rasp coming from Dean as result of trying to talk. Those five words seemed to have done him in. "Dean, you okay?" It was shaky, because, all happy-joy about the mud aside, _GOD_,and dumb, because _of course _he wasn't okay. People who were _okay_ didn't fall two stories and they didn't make _sounds_ like that; but it was a reflex since he was eight years old and Dean had taken his first of many flights when a spirit had ambushed the three of them at the motel. Dean had almost taken that flimsy bathroom door right off its hinges.

After another rasping inhale Dean clenched his jaw and nodded. "Good," he pushed out, all air. The single word had him rolling to his side, coughing and hacking. But nothing more than stubborn air, and Sam was thankful for that; that, and the fact Dean was able to move at all. He scooted back a few inches, giving Dean a little more room, experience giving him confidence in his brother's reboundability. He glanced up at the shattered window, rubbing his forehead. "Damn, Dean."

Dean meant to laugh, barked like a seal with a bad cold, and brought a hand to rest on his chest with a wince. "What d'you give that landing?"

Sam ignored him, happy he hadn't actually witnessed the landing and not wanting to think about what it might have looked like, and moved his hand to cup the back of Dean's head as he rolled over onto his back. He frowned and started to pull away, and Sam grunted, fighting the urge to grab hold of Dean and shake him into submission. "Just a sec, Dean, okay?" He used the tone people of authority use, the 'I'm only asking to give you the illusion of having a choice' tone.

Dean groaned, more annoyance than anything else, but stilled as Sam contented himself with the fact that while there was a hell of a bump on the back of his brother's head, there was no blood in Dean's hair, just more glorious mud. Sam found himself feeling a sudden fondness for mud. And at just about the same moment, a sudden feeling of self-consciousness at being so much in his brother's personal space. He pulled his hand away quickly, almost letting Dean's head thud back to the ground.

Dean caught himself on his shoulder blades, keeping his head off of the ground, and raised his eyebrows – what the hell? He shook his head and made a move like he was going to sit up. Sam immediately gave him the room but kept his hands where they would be behind Dean. _Damn instincts. _"How bad is it?"

Dean grunted and drew in a sharp breath, pausing on his elbows and concentrating on his breathing. Not trusting his body enough to talk again, he jerked his head: _it's not bad._

Sam wasn't buying it, clicked his tongue and rolled his eyes. "Where does it hurt?" Another stupid question. Dean shot him a glare as he drew himself up on his hands. Where _doesn't _it hurt might have been more appropriate.

It took longer than he would have liked, but Dean got himself propped up against the trunk of a nearby tree and when Sam made like he was going to try to get him more upright, Dean held up a hand, signaling that was far enough for the time being. His eyes were squeezed shut as the wheezing continued, quieter but there, tears built up in the corners.

Sam crouched nearby and shot nervous glances around the edges of the courtyard. Despite what he had said inside, the fact remained there _were _people inside the dorm, and with the moon lighting up the quad like it was, he didn't want to remain out in the open for too much longer. "Dean, we really should get out of here."

Dean nodded but didn't open his eyes. He made no move to get up on his own, so Sam, taking matters into his own hands, stooped and tried to slide his hands under Dean's arm. Dean made protesting noises as Sam manhandled him into a somewhat standing position, and as soon as he was relatively upright, he pushed Sam away as though he had gotten to his feet of his own accord. "Get offa me."

But as soon as Sam's hands weren't supporting him, Dean started to overbalance, and he reached out shakily, fisting Sam's jacket. "Wait, wait, wait." He swallowed and bobbed his head, eyes closed.

He stood like that for a few minutes, swallowing and bobbing while Sam waited with wide eyes. "Good now?"

"Yeah." Dean opened his eyes. "Yeah." He swiped Sam's hand away again, like Sam had been the one grabbing at _him_, and made it all of two steps before his knees gave and he hit the ground.

* * *

_Friday_

"…am."

The persistent voice drifted in, got into his head when his head really just wanted to be left alone. Whoever it was had some damn lofty hopes and dreams if they thought they were getting a response out of him this early in the morning.

"Sam."

_I can't hear you, I'm sleeping. _He communicated this with a half-asleep grunt.

This time louder, with a palm against the door: "SAM."

His head shot up, eyes glued together, left side of his face creased to match the folds in his pillowcase. "Mmgph."

"Yeah, my thoughts exactly."

Sam rubbed at his sticky eyes and managed to get the right one open, squinted through the sunlight at his bedside clock. It was a ridiculous amount of sun for being such an ungodly hour. "Time s'it?"

"After eleven." To Sam's surprise, the clock confirmed what Ben was telling him. "You missed class."

He fell back with a groan. It had been _late _when he'd gotten Dean back to the apartment, and he apparently hadn't remembered to set the alarm before he'd crashed. Truthfully, the thought of class in the morning hadn't even crossed his mind. Sensing Ben's presence still filling his doorway, Sam sat up and managed to get that right eye open again. He lifted an eyebrow. "Why didn't you wake me up?" he asked around a yawn.

"Do I look like your mother?"

Sam's eyes narrowed and Ben averted his gaze. "No one was home when I got back from the library. I could only assume one of you had killed the other and was out scouting a place to hide the body."

The change of subject was Ben's way of apology and Sam took it, because he sure owed Ben his fair share apologies. "We were out."

"Out?" Ben took a breath, crossed his arms and leaned against the doorframe. "This isn't like you, Sam." He flicked a glance over his shoulder, into the living room, and Sam picked up the annoyance in the look. "I mean, I'm totally cool with your estranged brother sleeping off his hangover on my Nana Ruthie's sofa. Really, I am. Just…how long is he going to be doing this for?"

Sam blinked. Dean, on the couch with a hangover. He was impressed; Ben was making up excuses for himself, doing all of the work for him. He ran a hand through his unruly hair. "Yeah, sorry about that."

Ben shook his head, communicating a forgiving _don't worry about it_. "You don't need to be sorry, Sam. He's your brother." He said the word like it meant something.

Sam cocked his head, rolled his eyes in a quirked grin. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess he is." He threw off his blankets and scooted over the edge of his bed. "He shouldn't be here longer than the weekend." _God willing, _Sam added silently as Ben nodded, obviously disappointed.

"I'll be at the library for the rest of the day," he said. "If you, you know, care." He turned and left, shutting the door before Sam could respond.

Sam sighed and flopped back against his pillow. _It's definitely gonna be one of those days. _

Ben wasn't pulling punches this morning; the blinds were already open in the living room, and while Sam blinked in the glare of the late morning sun, the light spilling over his face didn't seem to faze Dean in the least.

He was still asleep, though clearly uncomfortable. He was lying on his stomach, his frame taking up the entirety of the sofa, armrest to armrest. His left arm was folded under his chest and his right hung over the side, knuckles against the carpeting. There was some remaining dust and glass in his hair, giving it a glittery appearance, which would have made Sam laugh if he didn't have the image of Dean flying through that window permanently imprinted in his mind. His face was tight; eyes squeezed shut and mouth pulled down in pain, even in sleep.

Sam winced in sympathy and bent down near Dean's head, smashed into the pillow Ben had spared for him. Though he knew better, knew he knew better, and had had years of experience with this, his hand found itself resting lightly on the blanket covering Dean's bare back. Before he even said anything, Dean's head and upper body came up off of the couch and his left arm, like a concealed weapon, shot out and he gripped Sam tightly around the wrist.

The movement caused the blanket to slip, and Sam gaped as he saw Dean's bruised back in the light. "Dude. Your back looks like shit, Dean."

Dean frowned and threw Sam's arm away. He sat up slowly, elbowing Sam out of his way. "Wonder why. I only fell from a second-story window." He rolled away from Sam and into a seated position at the opposite end of the couch. Immediately, he doubled over and put his head in his hands, groaning.

"Sit up too fast?"

"You are on fire." Dean's voice was muffled by his hands, but the sarcasm wasn't.

"You want some Tylenol?" Sam gestured to the bottle he had left out on the coffee table.

"Don't you have any Vikes stashed around here or something?"

_Figures. _"No, Dean. I'm not really into the illegal movement and distribution of prescription medication."

Dean pulled his hands away and eyed Sam wearily. "Who are you, and what have you done with my little brother?"

Sam sighed, listening to Dean mumble from the couch as he filled a glass of water from the tap in the kitchen. He returned to the couch and held the glass out to Dean, who stared at it just long enough to make Sam stamp his foot and clear his throat, which was completely unintentional. This did seem to be his goal, though, because as soon as he stomped Dean grinned and grabbed the water. Dean tossed back three pills with a swig from the glass and stood slowly, letting out a breath as he rotated, trying to work out his sore muscles.

Sam moved closer, hands fluttering. "Are you sure you're – "

"Sam!" Dean whirled, raising his hands out of Sam's reach as he took a step back, nearly colliding with the coffee table. "You think I haven't taken a hit since you left? I'm good."

Dean was short-tempered always, more so when he was banged up, but Sam took the words like a hit. One that was maybe deserved. He averted his eyes, nodding. "Yeah. Yeah, you're – I'm sorry. I shouldn't have…cared."

Dean shook his head, lips pursed. "Sam – "

"No. You're good, I know that. I'm gonna go get ready for class." He spun for the bathroom and quickly shut the door.

He was, admittedly, gross, and couldn't believe Ben hadn't called him on it. Although, it might have accounted for some of the attitude of his wake-up call. Sam had washed up in the sink last night after he'd gotten Dean medicated and settled on the couch, but he'd been tired, and hadn't really put the time or effort into doing anymore than making himself clean enough to get into bed. He really didn't feel like adding a load of laundry onto the growing list of things to do this weekend: _Ghost hunt, don't kill Dean, laundry._

Staring at the mirror now, he wrinkled his nose at his disheveled appearance. The hair sticking up all of over the place wasn't really anything unexpected, but there was dust covering his hair, so much that it looked gray. _That's…awesome. _Skipping a shower was definitely out. He rushed through it, making sure to get the residual mud out of his nail beds. But there again, he found himself happy with the fact it was only mud.

He'd pulled on his jeans and had his arms poking through the holes of a tee shirt when he opened the bathroom door to find a fully-dressed Dean standing there. Sam spooked but recovered quickly, jerking his shirt over his head with narrowed eyes. It looked like Dean was the one skipping the shower. "You are so creepy right now."

Dean held something out to him, and Sam noticed he was holding a paper coffee cup in each hand. "Peace offering?"

It took him a moment, but Sam accepted the cup, eyeing its innocent-looking recycled paper sleeve and lid suspiciously. Not some shitty, two-hour old coffee from the gas station at the corner, no; the name on the sleeve identified the cup's contents as being a probably decent, moderately-priced brew from the coffee shop across from the gas station. Truth be told, he wasn't much of a coffee drinker. These days there were a dozen ways to get the extra oomph of a cup of joe. But it was a nice gesture, making it fairly uncharacteristic of the Dean he remembered, because a peace offering meant admitting fault. Sam was that much more suspicious. He took a cautious sip.

"Last time we were together, you really weren't much of a coffee drinker, so I didn't know what you'd like."

Sam swallowed the mouthful of hot coffee quickly. He could almost _feel _the cavity forming from all the sugar in the thing.

Dean grinned and lifted a shoulder, looking pleased with himself and taking a drink from his own coffee, most likely black. "I just got the girliest sounding thing they had."

Sam laughed and took another drink. "It's not bad."

Dean rolled his eyes. "Girl."

The tension immediately eased a bit, and the inevitable fights still to be had were put on the back burner. For the time being, at least. Sam snuck a glance into his bedroom and caught the time on the clock on his desk. "I'm cutting it close. I have to go to calc and then work," Sam spoke as he hurriedly shoved a couple of notebooks and a thick textbook into his book bag.

Dean followed him into his room. "Skip it."

Sam rolled his eyes and hopped around his room until he found his work shirt thrown over the rod in his closet. He pulled it out and stuffed that into his bag, as well. "I can't _skip _work, Dean. That's frowned upon, traditionally."

Dean huffed in classic Dean fashion. "We're already on a job."

Sam shook his head and continued his search, this time for his keys. "No, we're not. This isn't a job, this is…"

"What? Not as important as…" Dean suddenly frowned and pointed a finger at Sam. "Wait, you have a job?"

Sam snatched his key ring from beside the pencil cup on his desk. "Yeah. At the convenience store in Memorial Hall."

The continued dropping of names and places with which Dean was not familiar was obviously miffing him, but Dean played it off. "Not at the library?" He shrugged and sipped his coffee. "And here I thought I knew you."

"They weren't hiring."

Dean chuckled and followed Sam back out into the living room. He stopped him before he made it to the door. "What am I supposed to do all afternoon?"

Sam waved an arm towards his room and the lap top on his desk. "Do some research on the building. Find out what we may be dealing with. We'll go back tonight."

Dean scratched at his cheek, looking somewhat surprised. If there was anything he wanted to say, though, he tucked it away and kept to the topic at hand. "A spirit of some kind. I'll check for any suspicious deaths in the building. Accidents and shit like that."

He was being really, really cooperative for being Dean, and it gave Sam pause. "You're not gonna…just…don't touch anything."

Dean smiled broadly. All he was missing was the halo.

* * *

To be continued...


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter Six

"_You're a selfish bastard, you know that? You just do what you want. _

_Don't care what anybody thinks."_

_Friday_

Okay, maybe Sam was being a little crazy. A little.

_Maybe_.

He'd been gone for just under three hours and had called Dean twice. He'd called the first time just before he'd gone into class, just to make sure nothing drastic had happened in the last thirty minutes. And that Dean was still alive. And, almost most importantly, still in the apartment. Then he'd called after class to make sure he hadn't messed with his stuff. It wasn't that he didn't trust Dean, it was just that…no, it WAS pretty much just that he didn't trust Dean. Life had taught him to be somewhat protective of his property when it found itself within Dean's reach. Although, it was really up in the air which he should be more wary of, theft or pranks.

"_God_, Sam," Dean had exclaimed in answer to his second call. "I'm not five and you're not my babysitter. If you were, though, you'd pretty much suck ass, considering you left me here alone. Plus, you're nowhere near hot enough."

What Sam heard was, _I've already been through everything you own and it's not like you have anything that great to steal, anyway and I'm going to be an asshole to throw you off the scent. And you'd make an ugly girl. _"How's your back?" he'd asked lamely, and in response Dean hung up on him.

He still had to deal with the fact Dean hadn't really answered the question, and debated very annoyingly with himself about calling back. He came to the conclusion his call would not be answered, and that really, he knew the answer anyway, and resigned himself to return home to a much rifled-through apartment with an empty pantry and refrigerator, and therefore as a result, an empty wallet.

He wasn't expecting what he _did_ come home to. Which, really, showed a considerable amount of ignorance on his part.

Dean was waiting for him when he opened the door, standing in the middle of the room with a fairly large and ornately carved hunting knife aloft in his hand, looking a little tired and a lot manic. He didn't even give Sam time to close the door before pouncing, surprisingly cat-like for having a back as utterly screwed as he should.

Hand still wrapped around the knob, Sam reflexively flattened himself against the door, but while Dean shoved the knife into his face he did keep it at a somewhat reasonable distance.

"I knew you took this."

As hard as it is to remain composed with the point of a giant knife in your face, Sam had enough experience with such situations that he barely flinched, and even managed to look annoyed. _Oh, for the love of... _"Dean – "

"I KNEW it."

"Would you put that away before Ben sees it," Sam hissed, straightening to his full height and adjusting the strap of the bag over his shoulder. However, at this point, he was pretty sure Ben was either hearing a LOT he was pretending not to, or really needed to schedule an appointment at the clinic to get his hearing checked. Winchesters weren't a _quiet _group_._

Dean ignored him, and Sam was starting to feel a touch uneasy with him waving that knife around like he was, especially taking into consideration his spectacular flight less than twenty-four hours ago. He half-expected it to fly out of Dean's hand and end up stuck in the wall behind his head. "Do you know how much I loved this knife?"

Sam couldn't help himself. He'd rehearsed this moment in his head for weeks after stashing away the beloved weapon. He leaned in, eyebrows raised. "Why do you think I took it?" he asked nastily.

Dean was dumbstruck, a rarity and truly, a moment to savor. Sadly, it was over all too quickly and he resumed pointing the knife at Sam, eyes dark. "You're a freakin' thief."

_Says the guy who presumably just spent the afternoon deciding I had nothing worth stealing. _Sam knocked Dean's arm out of his face. "Don't point that at me."

"Don't hit me," Dean countered, teeth clenched.

And that's how two supposedly adult men ended up in a tangle of limbs in front of the door. Thankfully, the knife had been tossed, nudged, and/or kicked under the couch in the scuffle, never having come into play, and was nowhere in sight when Ben came running out of his room, eyes as wide as if the place was going up in flames.

His eyes went first to the overturned end table and lamp that had crashed to the floor and rolled out of the way to a stop against the door, the sound of which probably being what drew him out into the war zone. He then stared down at the both of them, Dean with a knee in Sam's chest and Sam pinned but scrabbling to gain the upper hand with a fistful of Dean's shirt. "Oookaaay," he said, and turned back to his room with a long, decidedly not so happy look at Sam. The door slammed shut loudly and pointedly.

Sam turned his attention from trying to upend the coffee table onto his brother with his free hand and met Dean's eyes, grateful at least that he seemed just as embarrassed as Sam himself was. "You think maybe he's saying we're too old for this?" he asked somewhat breathlessly.

"Only if he's never had an annoying bitch of a little brother." Dean shifted his weight into his right knee, grinding Sam into the carpet one final time before getting to his feet, giving him a light smack as he stood. He winched and reached back a hand to brace on his back. "God. I forgot what a pain in the ass you are."

Sam '_oofed' _and rolled to the side, bringing himself to his knees with a snort. "And I should feel privileged, having lived with you?"

Slightly hunched, Dean slowly made his way to the couch and sank onto the arm with a grunt. "Hey, you learned a lot from me."

Sam made a point to not ask about Dean's back. It served him right. "Yes. Please, refresh my memory. Just what exactly was the life lesson to be learned from having a brother who couldn't ever flush the toilet?" Sam scooted closer to the couch and bent to retrieve the knife.

Dean lifted a shoulder. "If it's yellow, let it mellow."

"You're disgusting." Sam stuck an arm under the couch, brushing the carpet cautiously, not wanting to cut himself. "You know," he said after a moment, his voice muffled with his head under his arm, "I didn't take the knife to piss you off. I took it to – "

"Piss Dad off," Dean finished. "I'm not a moron, Sam."

"Debatable." Sam straightened and held the weapon out hilt-first to Dean. "You can have it back if you want."

"Oh, can I really?" Dean glared for a moment before grabbing the knife from Sam's hand, muttering something to himself. He remained perched on the edge of the couch and let his brother straighten the rest of the room. Sam knew it was pointless to even ask for Dean's help.

They both looked over as Ben reentered the room, still looking pissed; maybe more so than before if possible. Dean had the knife stashed between the cushions of the couch before Ben had looked at anything other than the carpet.

He stopped in the middle of the room when he saw them both in more upright, if not guilty, positions. "No, please, don't grow up on my account."

Sam shot Dean a 'told ya' look, and Ben something much more apologetic. Before he had a chance to verbalize anything, Ben stalked his way across the room, stepping over the lamp Sam was reaching for. He may have even nudged it further away with the toe of his sneaker, but that might have been a product of Sam's guilty mind.

"I'm going for a walk," he announced icily, and exited the apartment with yet another slam.

"Kid sure knows how to slam a door," Dean observed as Sam retrieved the table lamp. He pulled the knife back into his lap, staring at it almost lovingly, which was…weird, actually. "You teach him that?" When Sam didn't answer with anything more than a huff he couldn't keep in, though he tried, Dean continued, not looking up from the knife in his hands. "Dad _would _be pissed, you know. Seeing the condition this thing's in right now."

Sam rolled his eyes and picked his dropped bag up from the floor. "Did you do _anything _constructive today?"

"You mean like figure out what we might be dealing with?"

"Yeah, I mean exactly that."

"No. Well, not technically."

"Not technically?" Sam moved to the kitchen, tossing his book bag into his darkened bedroom on the way, and grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge. Which, yes, he found to be significantly empty compared to how he remembered.

Dean made a 'gimme' gesture and Sam tossed him a bottle, as well. "I researched the building, sure." Dean uncapped the bottle and took a swig. "Found out all the stuff, you know, you should have looked into in the first place."

_Could we maybe let that GO? _Sam shifted his weight, put a hand on the breakfast bar. "And?"

"No deaths, no missing persons, no accidents."

"So…nothing."

"You didn't get that scholarship for nothin', huh?"

_Let's maybe let THAT go, too. _"So it's not a haunting?"

Dean seemed to consider it for a moment, but not as long as Sam would have liked. "Not a salt and burn kind of haunting, at least. So far, doesn't seem to be a ghost."

Sam felt his defenses rising. "Something bad happened here, Dean. I can feel it, and I know you can, too."

"Well, you tell me," Dean countered not so patiently. "This is your school."

Sam took a breath and chewed on his lip. "We know it was a research building originally. Psychology."

Before Sam could ask what Dean had come up with in what passed for research as far as he was concerned, he broke in. "Experiment gone wrong? Wouldn't be the first time. You Cardinals are kind of notorious for that, right?"

Sam opened his mouth to respond and paused. _What the…_ "Did you just exhibit knowledge?"

"Huh?"

Sam pointed an accusatory finger, a small smile playing on his lips. "You know the school mascot. And," he continued, eyebrows coming together, "about…Zimbardo." _Which is kinda scary._

"Do not." Dean's response was immediate, almost reflexive. His face was expressionless, his posture stiff.

"Wh – you just said it two seconds ago."

"Yeah? Prove it."

Sam shook his head and sighed, a twinge starting up behind his eyes. _Let him think he got away with that, it'll make him happy. Back on topic._ "Well, _something's _attacking those kids."

Dean squinted. "That's not necessarily true. These kids, they've all been alone when these 'attacks,'" he emphasized the speculation with finger-quotes, nearly losing his bottle of water, "happened."

Sam shook his head and very nearly slammed his own bottle onto the counter. "You're unbelievable. What about last night, was that another fake 'attack?'" he asked nastily, mimicking Dean's gesture. "Did you _trip_ through that window?"

Dean closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "You're looking for a fight where there's not one. I'm just saying we haven't found any evidence this is a concrete _thing _we're dealing with."

"I saw _something_ push you."

"Then find me _something _to kill."

There was venom in his voice, and Sam recoiled and swallowed. "You're right. I'm sorry." Even so, he couldn't shake the feeling Dean had pissed something off the night before. He could have sworn he saw… Sam ran a hand over his head and moved back into the living room. He sank into the middle cushion of the couch and leaned forward, lacing his fingers together between his knees. "So nothing jumped out at you?"

"Not really. It was a research lab, yeah; but not the cool, mad scientist kind of research lab. More like the stuffy old professor kind."

"How do you mean?"

Dean cocked his head. "Does it not bug you that this is your stuff and I know more about it than you right now?"

Sam glared. "Not until you just said it."

Dean grinned. "Anyway, pretty boring stuff. White rats in puzzle boxes and students earning a few bucks having their heads poked and prodded."

"Metaphorically speaking?"

Dean shrugged noncommittally, wincing at the motion. "One of those stuffy old professors, Brady, Bradley, Barton…something with a 'B'…did some pretty intense work with phobias in the seventies, right before the building was closed, but that's about as exciting as – "

"Phobias? Like fears?" Something clicked in Sam's brain.

"Isn't that the same thing?"

"Great." Sam sighed in the direction of the front door and shook his head. "And our resident psych expert is pissed at me."

"The kid's, like, nineteen years old. How does he have an area of expertise?"

"Dean, when you were nineteen you could take out a Rawhead by yourself. Among other things."

"Your point?"

"Monsters are your thing. Brains are Ben's."

Dean ran a hand over his face, weary and restless at the same time. Sam recognized the need to act when he saw it. Dean wasn't exactly one for sitting around and talking things out. "These incidents all seem to be happening at night, yeah? And it is, conveniently, night. Maybe we can do an old-fashioned stakeout," he said in his 'this is the plan' voice.

"What, sit in the car and stare at a building all night on the off chance something supernatural happens? I don't think so." Dean stared him down with that goddamn arrogant knowing smile of his, and Sam crossed his arms with a set jaw. "I mean it, Dean. No."

* * *

He got Sam with an innocent: "it's this or wait for someone else to bite it." Hitting below the belt, yeah, but hey, it worked.

Dean decided to wait down by the car while Sam had himself one last little hissy fit before they headed over to Maxwell Hall. It was amazing the kind of space a plea for "fresh air" could get a man these days, but it wasn't the air he was standing out here for. It was just for some semblance of control. He maybe wasn't fully aware that's what he was looking for at the moment, but that was it. He was the kind of guy who liked to know his surroundings, liked to have the upper hand, and there was just no way to have that in Sam's apartment. He was and had always been able to adapt to a new situation or scenario like _that_, but this was different. He was off his game. The constant complaining of his back wasn't really helping matters either; another good reason to escape the small, cramped confines of the apartment and perpetually guilty, puppy-dog eyes of a certain little brother.

There really hadn't been a question about whether or not they followed through with his stakeout plan. Dean was going, and that was that, and Sam could tag along if he wanted to but at this point, he wasn't really doing Dean any favors. It was very much the other way around, and Dean was teetering on the edge of Fucking Fed Up with the whole damn thing. He snuck another glance at his cell phone and cursed under his breath. He'd talked his way out of a hell of a lot…but he was gonna need some kind of divine intervention to pull himself out of this one. So, pretty much, he was on his own.

After a quick check to reassure himself that the street was dark and empty before he went and incriminated himself, Dean popped the trunk and chest inside and surveyed its contents. One could never be too careful, and he knew he was taking something iron-loaded with him.

Eyes roaming over the various weapons, Dean sighed. He wasn't really upset about the knife. It irked him, sure, in the same way that losing any piece of weaponry irked him and because he'd spent the better part of a week removing and replacing every single item from the trunk of his car looking for the damn thing, but it wasn't really what was important to him. And truthfully, he was maybe a little proud of the kid for having it in him to put in that last little 'fuck you' to John Winchester. It wasn't something many people possessed. _He_ sure as hell didn't. Not that he'd ever felt it was as deserved as Sammy had, every day since he was eleven, it seemed.

Dean had most of his upper body in the trunk space, which was _not _doing anything to help the strain on his back, rummaging around for a few spare rounds when he heard footsteps. They were coming from behind him, which was the wrong direction to be Sam's, and he had just enough time to toss the gun he was holding back with a clatter and slam the lid shut before the steps stopped.

"Dean."

Hoping the darkness of the street had provided the necessary cover for his toss-and-slam, he pulled himself out of the trunk much more casually. "Thought my atlas might be back here," he said to Ben with an easy-going grin that was anything but easy-going. _Why are you offering information to this kid, jackass? You don't owe him anything._ He knew _that _wasn't true, and leaned back to rest an elbow on the back of the car and waited for Ben to say whatever it was he was here to say.

Ben, assumed to be returning home from his walk, stood a full, safe ten feet away, jaw set and hands stuffed into the pockets of his Stanford hoodie. It wasn't immediately clear if he felt threatened by Dean or was under some impression he was doing the threatening, and Dean really wasn't sure which would be more amusing at this point.

Ben's eyes narrowed, the subtle motion made visible by the thrown light of the street lamp on the corner, undeterred by the glare on his glasses. "You taking off?"

Now Dean could read the challenge being communicated through his body language. Like Sam was something they were fighting over. The four-year-old forgotten in the heat of divorce proceedings. And damn if this guy wasn't eager to get him out of town and have the little brat all to himself. Dean lifted his chin. "Soon." It really miffed him that this arrogant little turd stood a couple inches taller than himself. _They givin' out height scholarships or what?_

"You're not sticking around, are you? After you and Sam finish…whatever it is you've been up to, I don't even want to know – you're out of here, right?"

There it was: everything Dean knew and Sam knew and neither had the stones to bring up. This kid was smart, and he didn't bullshit or beat around the bush. Dean felt a whole new level of respect for him. He grinned. "I like you."

"Thanks. Answer the question."

"Yeah," Dean nodded, returning the favor. "That's the plan."

Ben took his hands out of his pockets and crossed his arms. "And I'm guessing when that moment comes, you're going to want him to come with you, and he's gonna want you to stay with him."

Dean's eyebrows came together and he leaned back, putting more of his weight onto the car behind him. "You read minds, too there, Einstein?"

"Look," he said, his eyes following it up with a clear, _may I be blunt?_ "Sam didn't mention you at all over the past year and a half. And that says a lot to me." It said a lot to Dean, too, because he was sure that he'd mentioned his smart and smartass little brother to at least a dozen people over the past year and a half. Usually drunk or well on the way, maybe, but still. It wasn't like Sam was a big secret to him.

"He's my friend," Ben continued, barely giving Dean the time to swallow the words as he threw them at him, "and I don't want to see him hurting that bad again." Before Dean could say what he wanted to – _neither do I _– Ben gave him a meaningful, silencing look. "He's like a brother to me."

Ouch. Dean would be feeling that one for awhile. He got the implication, though: what must he have done to Sam to cause him to pretend he didn't even exist. Not one to normally feel the need to rise to the occasion and defend himself, Dean straightened, wanting to put this kid straight, too. "Listen, it wasn't like that."

"Whatever it was _like_, it better not be like again."

The clipped and to the point conversation pretty much died right there, and Dean gave up on any chance to make Ben understand what had really happened in his friend's past. Before any words made it from his head to his mouth, he realized it didn't much matter. He swallowed back the excuses he'd been unwillingly forming ever since he'd rolled over the state line. _"You think this is bad, you should see him with our dad." "I wasn't the one he was running away from, so haul that attitude the hell back, Sparky." "I've given everything I've ever had for that little shit and he still ran out on me." _

None of that mattered now. All that mattered in that moment was he was happy Sam had this kid looking out for him, and said as much.

Ben's eyes were dark. "Someone has to."

He left it at that, and walked past Dean and into the building without another word. And for all it killed him, Dean let him. And knew where he was going to have to leave things with Sam, too. He just hoped Ben was smart enough to understand why when he was left with the mess.

Sam trotted out to the car less than a minute later, armed against the night's breeze with his own Stanford hoodie, notebook in hand. "Yeah, he's definitely pissed." Sam had one hand on the door handle and glanced up quizzically at Dean, lingering by the rear of the car. "You ready?"

His eyebrows did their innocent quirky thing, and Dean forced a grin. "Yeah." He brought the lid of the trunk down. "Let's roll."

* * *

Not knowing how long they'd have privacy in the apartment before Ben returned, but knowing it couldn't be too much longer seeing as it was nearing eleven, they'd decided to bring most of their collected research along to go over in the car as opposed to talking it to death in the living room. It had mostly been Sam's decision, since Dean's solution to everything was to run around shooting things. He'd already tired of the research thing, and his exact words had been something along the lines of, "Knock yourself out. I'll be doing something useful."

So far, however, "something useful" was nothing more than sitting in the Impala in a parking lot across the quad from Maxwell Hall. The building really was within walking distance, but Dean felt more comfortable with the car's weapons nearby, along with the prospect of a quick getaway. Sam guessed he just didn't want to have to deal with the humiliation of being carried back by his little brother again.

It was a chilly night but Dean refused to leave the car on while they waited. Sam wasn't sure if it was the waste of gas, the attention it would draw – the Impala not being a quiet vehicle – or just to piss him off. Judging by the small smirk on Dean's face as Sam grumbled and crossed his arms over his chest, tucking his hands under his pits, he guessed it was a combination of all three.

Armed with his leather jacket, Dean even decided to push the envelope of his asshole-ness. "Stuffy in here," he muttered, and reached for the window crank on the door. Sam glared as he rolled the window down a few inches. "There," Dean said, leaning back against his seat. "That's better."

_He'll be gone soon_, Sam told himself, wondering a half-second later if he should feel guilty about the pang of relief he had at the thought. He decided no, for a number of reasons, and returned his eyes to the notes on his lap. "I need some light," he said without looking up at Dean.

"What are you tellin' me for?"

"Because I can't feel my fingers."

"You are such a little girl." It worked, though; a moment later Sam heard a creak as Dean rolled the window up.

_Point to me._ Sam uncrossed his arms and pulled out the flashlight he'd taken from a kitchen drawer, having left his first behind in that classroom. "I was supposed to have a date tonight."

"You serious?"

Sam's body remained rigid, squared in the seat while his head swiveled to meet Dean's eyes. Dean bobbed his head, impressed and shocked, both. "Who is she?"

"Friend of a friend. Her name's Jessica."

"Calm down there, Sparky. Your excitement has me all a-flutter," Dean deadpanned. Sam didn't respond, didn't know how to, didn't even know why he was telling Dean this. Showing off for big brother?

Dean took Sam's silence as a cue to continue. "She's probably your blonde, blue-eyed, All-American dream girl, huh, Sammy?"

"Look, can we just change the subject?"

"Yeah, sure."

Sam nodded and studied the newspaper article following Brandon Perry's supposed suicidal leap. He kept coming back to what Dean had said about the experimentation on phobias, and the fact that all of the victims were attacked by things they'd been afraid of. He wasn't so out of the game that he didn't see the connection there. He was just so out of the game that he couldn't figure it out without his big brother holding his hand along the way. "You think it's important Brandon was afraid of heights?"

"Do _you_ think it's important?"

"I don't know. It's a lead, right? We have a known fear, we have a death in the building, we have a connection to research on fears done in the same building…could be a lead."

"Could be."

Sam let out a breath. "We've gotta figure this out, Dean. I can't let anyone else die."

Dean turned, frowning. "What do you mean 'let'? Sam, you didn't 'let' anything happen. You didn't push Brandon Perry off of that roof."

Sam shook his head. "Yeah, well, I might as well have. I knew something wasn't right and I…I ignored it. Or tried to. I didn't want to be any part of it."

"But you are now. You're trying to fix it."

_Yeah, well. _There was a lot of weight to Dean's words, but Sam couldn't find the energy to have this discussion. The one where he had to tell Dean this was a one-time thing. He was pretty sure Dean knew anyway. A change of subject seemed in order. "Seriously?" he asked. "We're just gonna sit in the car and wait for something to happen?"

"It's called a 'stakeout,' Sammy."

"Don't call me that. And I know what it's called."

"Then what about this situation don't you understand?"

Sam sighed. "What exactly are we waiting for?" he asked. "The bogeyman to come running out screaming, 'I did it, it was me'?"

"Don't be ridiculous."

Sam bobbed his head. _Right. I'm the one being ridiculous. Thinking that sitting in a car in the freakin' cold is a great idea. _He returned his attention to the notebook open on his lap, training his flashlight beam on the pages. There wasn't a lot. He found the obituary of the professor Dean had mentioned, but it was barely more than a blurb. He had a date of death and a hometown but not much more than that. Dean really wasn't good at the research thing.

A sigh came suddenly from his brother, and Sam looked over to see that Dean had propped his elbow up on the door under the window and put his head in his hand, looking both bored and tired.

"Hey," Sam said with a smile, "this was your brilliant idea."

Dean answered with a grunt, and frowned as he kept watch out the windshield.

Time passed excruciatingly slowly. Sam was twitchy, on edge, and kept glancing up in thirty second intervals as he caught glimpses of street lights in the corner of his eye.

"Knock it off," Dean muttered into his hand.

A routine glance out the windshield revealed to Sam what he assumed Dean was looking for. It looked like a bright light traveling through the second floor hall. Could be a spirit, a stupid kid's flashlight, or just a lure to get them in the building. He leaned forward in the seat and squinted. "The hell is that?"

"Finally." Dean, sounding almost annoyed, was already popping open his door and stepping out of the car, shotgun in hand. "What we're looking for."

* * *

They entered that night through the same loose boarding that provided them entry before. The interior of the building was just as dark, dank, and bleak as Sam remembered it to be, and the air just as stale and unbreathable. There was a short moment of quiet coughing and throat clearing as they tried to adjust.

Sam was still wincing and clucking his tongue against the graininess there when he felt something solid connect with his hand. He glanced down at the pistol Dean was handing him and took it with a slight sense of unease. He knew how to use the gun, sure, and had since he was a kid, but that didn't necessarily mean he felt comfortable with the weapon in his hand.

Dean seemed more composed and certainly more comfortable, moving forward stealthily, leading with his gun and doing a damn good job of ignoring the dusty and nearly intolerable atmosphere. They started down the hall, Sam leading the way with the beam of his flashlight. They retraced their footsteps from the night before; quite literally, since the impressions from their shoes were still visible in the thick dust. By the time they reached the staircase that would lead them to the second floor, and hopefully to their ghost, the air was just this side of unbearable. Sam swiped at his eyes in irritation, doing more harm than good as he ground the dust into his eyes as opposed to getting rid of it. Every movement brought more grainy swirls up in his path and he grunted, frustrated.

"Hey," Dean barked. "Would you stop fidgeting and keep the damn light in a straight line?"

Sam narrowed his eyes, nose twitching. "Fine."

"Thank you. It would be great to be able to see where the hell I'm going." Dean turned back and continued stalking through the halls, not even flinching as he stomped past the room where he had taken his dive.

_What the hell is the matter with him? _Dean's mood has been deteriorating rapidly since they'd left the apartment. He was snappy and if possible, even more sarcastic than usual but Sam could see no reason. Other than, you know, the obvious. The obvious being _him. _Unless… "Did Ben say something to you?"

There was a pause, but he couldn't really read Dean's expression from the back of his head. "No. Why?"

"Because you're acting like an asshole," Sam said bluntly, blowing air through his nostrils. He sneezed.

They moved slowly in silence down the hallways after that, the way lit by Sam's flashlight and the moonlight trickling in through the warped boarding, not really sure what it was they were looking for. Sam started to feel uneasy for an entirely different reason, one that sent a shiver down his spine.

"You feelin' that?"

Sam nodded, glad he wasn't the only one. "Yeah. Somebody's pissed."

"'Somebody?'" Dean asked, stopping to turn and quirk an eyebrow.

Sam ignored the eyebrow. "That professor you mentioned, you said he worked with phobias?"

"Yeah, he tried to get people over their fears."

"How did he do it?"

"I dunno."

"No, what kinds of experiments did he do?"

"I don't know. The experimental kind."

Sam rolled his eyes as he continued to follow his brother through the dust bunny minefield.

And now, it seemed, was Dean's turn to ask questions. "And you're sure nobody died here in a freak accident or anything? The mad professor, maybe?"

Sam recalled the obituary he'd read in the car. "He died, yeah. Four years ago, in Naugatuck, Connecticut. In his bed, at the age of eighty-six."

Dean's face fell. "No dice."

Sam shook his head. "I dunno. I mean, it's gotta be him, right?"

"I thought we'd been over this – "

"We don't have enough evidence to say yea _or _nay, here, Dean, so why can't you let me talk this out? I've got to figure this one out."

"Oh," Dean said, his tone suddenly harsh. "Oh, _you've _gotta figure this one out."

"Wow," Sam said, raising his eyebrows, "and _I'm _the one picking a fight where there isn't one?"

Dean continued as though Sam hadn't spoken a word. "God, Sam. I think…you think you're doing a good thing here, and you care about what happened to these kids – "

"I do care."

"Yeah, for how long? Until we figure this out and stop it? A week?" Dean raised his eyebrows. "Tomorrow?"

Sam swallowed hard. "That's not fair." Not fair, but not necessarily wrong. It wasn't as though he didn't care what was going on out there, but he was certainly done hunting it out. He had a new life, and wasn't ready to ditch it.

"You said it yourself – this isn't who you are anymore," Dean said, as though reading his mind. "Your priorities are different."

His voice was mocking, condescending, and much too reminiscent of a more distant mocking and condescending voice. Sam straightened. "Don't stand here and preach to me. I care about what's happening here, and I want to stop it. I am _going_ to stop it. But I cannot live my life for other people. I did that for eighteen years."

Dean's eyes narrowed and the harsh shadows of the flashlights further exaggerated his obvious anger. "You're selfish."

"So I've been told."

"We finish this, and you're just gonna lock everything away again. Everything you know, everything you've been through?"

This was the discussion he'd wanted to avoid having, but Dean was nothing if not confrontational. And Sam was willing to rise to the occasion. "I'm here," he said loudly, arms out. The beam from his flashlight swung in an arc across the hall, briefly illuminating Dean's face and fury in full. "I'm doing this. I'm not running away from it. What more do you want from me?"

"I want you to want to do this!"

"What kind of person would _want _to do this?" Sam exclaimed.

Dean just stood and stared, and it gave Sam a moment to eat his words. _I don't take it back, _he told himself, almost for reassurance, _I don't take it back, I don't take it back, I don't – _

"Get outta here," Dean said finally, his voice low, even, and hard. "I can handle this myself."

Sam blinked. "What?"

"Get the hell out of here! You know you can't do this and that's why you called me out here. To do it for you. It's what you wanted, now go, and let me do it."

Sam took a long, slow breath, numb to the tickle of dust in the back of his throat. He'd just wanted to make Dean understand what he feeling, what he'd been feeling then…yes, perhaps yelling wasn't the way to do this, but it was the only way he knew to get through to them. Fighting to get your point across. He didn't move.

"Sam, I mean it."

The spreading numbness started to give way to a red-hot anger. A very familiar, red-hot anger. Who the hell did Dean think he was? He was right though; this wasn't his place. Sam took a backwards step towards the way they'd come. "It was nice seeing you."

Dean sucked in a breath, his face unreadable. He took a solid step in the opposite direction, out of the view of Sam's flashlight. "I'll send you the bill."

"Don't bother," Sam called after him. He turned and started back for their point of entry with deliberate, heavy steps.

The cool, crisp air of the dark night outside was welcome. Sam stood by the building for a moment, sorting things out. He half-expected Dean to either call or pop his head out the window behind him, snarking at Sam to get his sensitive, girly ass back in there.

He didn't. Even after five minutes, Sam was still just a moron standing outside an abandoned building in the middle of the night with a flashlight in one hand and a silent cell phone in the other.

He'd gotten everything he'd wanted. The case was off his hands, Dean was off his hands, and he could go back about his business, about his life. Dean had very few things he'd brought with him, and probably didn't even have anything back in the apartment. He could just…go.

These were all supposed to be good things, but Sam couldn't shake a heavy feeling in his gut as he crossed the quad on his way home and walked past the Impala.

* * *

This was the way it had to be. Dean knew it, and if Ben knew it, then Sam sure as hell had to know it, too. He'd known he had to shake Sam, literally and figuratively. Sam certainly had handed him the opportunity, and he hadn't had to search too long to find the words, surprisingly enough. Or not.

Dean had had his doubts all week, starting with just who it was he was going to come face-to-face with when he saw Sam. Doubts were just doubts, but they'd evolved into something more closely resembling fears. Especially here, magnified in the open, abandoned space. He was afraid this wasn't a rejection of the lifestyle, or what Dad wanted, but of HIM.

And in the blink of an eye, that fear spread. Sam had left because of him, and here he was, posed to repeat all of the mistakes. But he couldn't stop himself, because he _knew _it was the right thing, no matter what he was feeling. Sam didn't want him to be here. This was Sam's school, Sam's town, Sam's _life_…and it was a life that had no place or room for Dean.

It just wasn't the time or the place. Maybe someday, sure, but not now. And hearing Ben put it all into words had done well to put it in perspective, as well. Sam _felt _things. And there was no getting around the fact this was going to hit Sam hard no matter the outcome, because that was just the way he was. He was an obsessor. He would obsess about what he did, what he didn't do, what he could have done, could have done differently, and more than anything: what had happened. Over and over again, the accidents, the death of that kid, and the fact that it all happened right under his nose.

So, really, it was pretty easy to tell himself he had done this for Sam.

Dean took a breath, resulting in a brief, gritty coughing fit which did nothing nice to his sore back and head. _Nice one, genius. _He raised his gun and took a few steps down an unexplored corridor. "Alright, you…whatever you are," he called into the darkness. "I've invested a hell of a lot in this little wild goose chase, and I'm not leavin' til you're toast."

From below, a groan sounded and Dean's head jerked in the direction. Structural or otherworldly, he couldn't tell. But he was going to find out. He turned and started back towards the stairs, ignoring Sam's retreating footsteps. "Here, ghostie, ghostie."

As soon as his boot hit the tile of the first floor, a light, chilled breeze whipped up out of the stillness of the corridor and blew a whirlwind of decades-old dust down the hall towards him. Dean stepped out of the way, flattening himself against the paneled wall and watching with uneasiness and fascination as the miniature tornado whistled past him. The dust formation fell apart at the end of the hall, and a groan came from behind a door there and seemed to reverberate back towards him, coming through the walls, the floor, and the building as a whole.

And suddenly remembering the toss into the window, he also remembered this spirit wasn't exactly his best friend, and maybe taunting and threatening it out loud wasn't the best way to approach the situation.

"Well, that was…creepy." Dean's grip on his gun tightened as he moved in the direction of the sound. The temperature change was instantaneous as he took a step forward. _Yep, ghost. _His grip on his gun tightened. It wouldn't stop the spirit, but it would slow it down. Hopefully.

Dean's body was tense as he moved towards the end of the hall. His spidey-sense was definitely tingling. "Here, ghostie," he said softly, his breath misting in front of his face. Bastard was close. Really close.

"Hey, doc," he said loudly, though not sure why. "I've got this fear I was hoping you could help me with. I hear you've got a real – " Dean paused and jerked in the direction of a loud _thump_ – "knack for that."

He took another step down the hall. "You see, I'm afraid of…" Dean paused, trying to think of the wussiest thing he could. "Unicorns. You think you can – "

His words caught in his throat as he was thrown to the right. He had just enough time to catch the eerie flash of a pair of eyes at the end of the hall before the fragile lock on the door he impacted snapped with his weight as he plowed through it. Dean's flashlight hit the floor at the same time his head hit the wall, and all of the lights went out.

* * *

To be continued...


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

"_You know, we made a hell of a team back there."_

"_Yeah."_

_Janesville, Wisconsin, November 1991_

"Is he still talking, Sammy?" Dad sounded scared, and Sam wasn't used to Dad sounding scared. Dad was always gruff and in control but he sounded like something inside of him was coming apart, like he had strings snapping one by one, the strain of each pop escaping through the unfamiliar crack in his voice. This was bad. The roar of the car was louder than Sam had ever heard it, like Dad was pushing it harder than it wanted to go. This was really bad.

Sam looked down at Dean, not something he was accustomed to being able to do, and shook his brother gently; a chubby hand on a bony shoulder. "Dean?"

Dean's face was pressed against the seat, and the sound he made was muffled and really wasn't talking, more like something wrong with his breathing, and Sam stared at the rough blanket Dad had hastily thrown over Dean when he put him in the backseat. His fingers worked the frayed edge.

"Sam?"

"Uh uh," he answered quietly, continuing to play with the edge of the blanket. "Is Dean sick?"

Dad inhaled sharply, and Sam watched the back of his head bob up and down. His hair was wet with water, or something. His eyes met Sam's in the rearview mirror but moved quickly away. "Yeah, Sammy, Dean's sick."

"He okay?"

"He's gonna be fine."

Sam's hand moved from the blanket to grip Dean's sleeve at the shoulder. He'd heard enough in his short life to know that "gonna be fine" and "is fine" were not the same thing. So despite Dad's attempt at a soothing tone, Sam knew that Dean wasn't okay, and his grip on Dean's t-shirt increased. Dean sucked in a long breath and his head lolled to the side, falling against Sam's leg. In the dusky yellow glow of street lights rushing past, Sam could now see a streak of red running down Dean's neck, disappearing under the blanket. Sam's fingers brushed the coarse material once more, and he tugged on the blanket, curious.

"Sam," Dad barked. When Sam looked up guiltily to again meet his father's eyes in the mirror, he saw something much softer and older there. "Leave him be, Sammy," Dad ordered, his voice hoarse.

"Are you okay?" Sam asked hesitantly. There was no answer as the car banked suddenly to the left with a squeal of tires. Everything inside of the car lit up like the fourth of July and, curious about the sudden increase of light, Sam straightened to peer out of the window. Dad had turned into a ginormous parking lot. Wal-Mart? Dad hated Wal-Mart. Hated anyplace so big and open and brightly lit. It was in places like these that Sam's curiosity got the best of him and he wandered off like the annoying little brat he was. At least, that's what Dean had told him the last time Dad had dared to make a stop like this.

Dad jerked the car to a stop, straddling two parking spaces near the entrance. He left the keys hanging from the ignition and put an arm up on the bench seat, twisting to look back at them. Dean was still, his head resting against Sam's leg, and Dad swallowed like something was caught in his throat. "Sammy, I need you to watch over Dean, okay?"

Sam panicked and leaned forward, flattening his hands on the back of the seat, his little heart pounding. "Where're you going?"

Dad's face softened further, and he tilted his head. His hand moved over and ruffled Sam's hair. "Inside, kiddo, for just a minute. I have to get some things for Dean."

"Med'cine?"

"Yeah." Dad's smile was sad. "I gotta get him some medicine. You watch him, you hear?"

"Yessir." It's what Dean always said when Dad said these same words to him about Sam. _You watch him, you hear? Yessir._

Dad's hand twitched on the seat and his eyes were focused on Dean's scrunched-up face. He didn't blink. "I'm sorry."

Sam watched him stare for a minute before Dad sucked in a breath, snapping out of it. His eyes passed quickly over Sam and in the time it took to blink, he was gone.

He was used to being left in the car, but certainly not under these circumstances. Sam felt scared and strangely important. He didn't know the song on the radio, and couldn't climb up over the seat to change the station. Not with the way Dean was resting on his legs. Sam didn't like being alone in the car with Dean and he really hoped Dean didn't wake up right now. He was always grumpy when he woke up and Dad was gone.

Dean stirred and made a sound like a hurt animal. "Dad," he wheezed.

Sam pressed down on Dean's shoulders as he started to pull himself up. "He's getting you some med'cine." The blanket slipped down Dean's chest and Sam stared at his ripped, blood-stained t-shirt, unable to look away.

Dean fell back against the seat, unable to shove Sam's hands away. His eyes were shut tight, his breathing quick and heavy. "Sammy," he said, his voice a whisper. Sam had to lean in to hear him at all. "Where's Dad?"

Sam opened his mouth to answer, because maybe Dean hadn't heard him when he'd said it before, but the door to the car creaked open and Dad fell in. He tossed a plastic bag onto the seat next to him. "Here, Dean." He reached over the seat and put a hand on Dean's face. "I'm right here."

Dean relaxed under Dad's hand, but Sam kept a grip on his t-shirt. He held on tightly the whole way home.

Only the night before, Sam had thought this new apartment was bare and cold and much too small. It had been chilly the past few days but they didn't have the money to keep the heat on. They'd been wearing layers, and Dean had given Sam his heaviest sweatshirt.

Now, though, it felt warm, almost homey. Just right for the three of them. Dad had rolled towels and stuffed them in the gaps in the window frames and wrapped Sam up in a flannel blanket. Dean was sleeping and the sounds he was making were normal, nothing forced or grating like in the car. Sam crawled up onto the bed next to him, careful not to crowd. Even so, Dad cleared his throat from his chair, where he had been staring at his hands. "Leave him be, Sammy."

"Not touching," Sam said quietly, hands flat on his thighs. The whisper was enough to rouse Dean. He moved his head restlessly from side to side, mumbling. Both Sam and Dad leaned in.

"This…book does have an index listing for armlocks."

Dad chuckled and sat forward in his chair, rubbing a hand over Dean's short hair. "I'm sure it does, kiddo." Sam thought Dad was tired, and maybe crazy, because what Dean said didn't make any sense to him. But he didn't know as much as Dad and Dean did, so maybe it did mean something and he just didn't know it yet.

Again, Dean stilled under Dad's hand, and the room was quiet. The smile was suddenly gone from Dad's face. He looked as old as he had in the car; older, maybe. Sam knew he was tired, and scooted around on his knees to face him. "I can watch Dean, Dad."

Dad leaned back in his chair. He looked like he was going to cry. "Okay, bud. You watch him." As he stood to leave, he reached forward and tousled Sam's hair. It was different from the way he'd messed with Dean's hair, and Sam smiled.

It was almost an hour after Dad went to bed that Dean dragged in the kind of breath that told Sam that he was starting to wake up. He crawled closer and sat back on his heels, watching Dean, just like he'd told his dad he would. Dean's head rolled around a little before it stopped, facing him. "Dean?" Sam whispered, leaning his face in close.

Dean's eyelids fluttered and rested closed before he pulled them open. It took a moment for Sam's face to really register, and then he breathed out a soft, "Sammy."

"I'm watching over you," Sam declared proudly. "Dad said I could."

Dean smiled a little and his eyes fell closed again.

"I'm sorry," Sam said softly.

"For what?"

"I don't know." And he didn't know; he just knew that Dad said it in the car. Maybe they did something wrong and that's why Dean got hurt.

"Then don't be sorry," Dean said breathily, and then he was out again.

Sam carefully crawled around to sit next to Dean's head, propping himself up against the backboard. He watched the clock on the wall. Sam had never been allowed to stay up this late before. It wasn't long before he yawned, and his eyelids started to fall but he knew he had to stay awake. He had to stay with Dean. Had to watch over him. Had to…

* * *

_Saturday…technically_

Ben pulled his eyes away from the open Word document on his laptop – all three-hundred and seven words of it, title pathetically included – and redirected his gaze to the lower right-hand corner of the screen, noting the time at just past one o' clock in the morning. Now that the psych exam was over, he'd moved onto the next project like the good little student that he was.

He leaned back in his chair and rubbed at his eyes, nearly losing a contact lens. It was probably late enough to switch over to the glasses, anyway. He was tired, and understandably so; most people on campus were either hardcore buzzing or hardcore sleeping right about now. It was perhaps a little late in the night to be working on a paper, especially on a weekend, but six to eight page papers didn't really have a tendency to write themselves and Ben liked to get a jump-start on such a project whenever he could. Especially considering the pace he was working at. He didn't really think he'd be able to fall asleep just yet anyway. He couldn't get his thoughts to slow down enough to write this paper and he sure wasn't going to have much more luck trying to sleep.

It was a little over an hour ago Sam had stalked into the apartment, alone and bringing with him a little invisible tornado of rage tearing through the living room. Papers that had been left discarded on the coffee table blew up and onto the floor as he stalked past on the way to his bedroom; Ben heard them settle softly after Sam slammed his door shut. They were really going to have to check the hinges on their doors, the week they'd been put through. Sam entered his room without a word, and Ben felt simultaneously stung and victorious with the lack of communication. Sam was obviously peeved, undoubtedly at his brother, but maybe also a little at the hostility he, himself had been exhibiting. It would pass. It had before.

If Dean was gone, then Ben was happy because it meant this shady character he didn't know was out of his home and more importantly, it meant he had his friend back. He had the Sam he'd known for the past year and a half as opposed to this imposter who'd been invading Sam's body the past few days. The one who stayed out at all hours and slept through class. Ben knew a bad influence when he saw it sleeping on his grandmother's couch, and also knew Sam was certainly better off this way. Otherwise he would have mentioned this brother of his before, right?

As he had at least a dozen times already since Sam returned home, Ben checked his AIM window. SWinchester83 (Sam was nothing if not original) remained online and un-idle. One wall over, Sam was still awake and at his computer. Ben felt a pang of guilt. He hadn't exactly been the most understanding and sympathetic friend over the past few days, and felt he owed Sam to make the first move. He double-clicked the screen name and typed out, _You okay?_

_yeah_

He'd responded too quickly for Ben to attach much truth to the words. Obviously, it was hard to read emotion from a computer screen, but the response seemed dismissive. _Wanna talk? _he sent next.

_not really_

_Tomorrow?_

_yeah maybe_

Ben sighed and closed the window. He debated doing more work on the paper, but turning in for the night seemed so much more appealing, given the time and the long day he'd had. He moved to close his laptop when the familiar ping of a new instant message stopped him. Surprisingly, the message was from Sam.

_ever hear of a dr james bradley?_

The name was familiar, yes, but the question still gave Ben pause. _Okay…random._

* * *

Really, it sucked Sam had spent so much of his adolescence in a raging, stormy, pissed-off funk, because he came to associate stomping around and slamming doors with the release of that frustration. Such activities cooled him down, much like throwing something through a window would, and now, when he really, really _wanted_ to be mad, he was sitting on the edge of his bed feeling more stupid than furious, staring at a dirty, frayed length of string.

His shoe had gotten caught in the thin rope as he slammed his way into the apartment, fraying pieces snagged on the bottom of the couch. He had jerked the rope from his foot and started to toss it away before he realized what it was.

There hadn't been money growing up, which meant there really hadn't been presents on Christmas or birthdays. Seven-year-old Sammy hadn't accepted this, and that year, when Dad was ready to throw out the pair of boots he'd been wearing since…well, since Sam could remember, he'd pulled out the shoelaces and knotted them into bracelets for his Dad and brother, causing Dean to spend a large portion of the day taunting him and calling him a girl. In fact, it might have been the event that began that particular name-calling trend.

He'd forgotten a long time ago about the shoestrings, and was surprised Dean had kept the damn thing for all these years. It must have come loose and gotten caught in the tussle earlier. It was nice to know now Dean had kept a little something of Sam on him all this time, but it didn't do so much to dilute the frustration Sam was feeling at the moment.

He'd been yelled at, belittled, and basically dismissed; but that was the story of his life thus far and it barely fazed him. You know, once he'd walked it off and slammed a couple doors. Now he felt fooled. Dean had pulled a decent John Winchester impersonation back in Maxwell, but Sam knew a defense mechanism when he saw one, and he was well-acquainted with this one of Dean's. He knew how Dean operated, and exactly what Dean was doing. He was an asshole, sure, but the majority of his actions had always come from a lifelong self-imposed obligation to spare Sam pain or any other form of discomfort.

Well, two could play that game. Sam was not in the least – okay, maybe in the _least _– surprised at the seemingly automatic nature of his actions as he stood up and walked straight across the room to plop down in front of his computer. He opened his web browser and scrolled down his favorites list, stopping on Google and typing in keywords he hoped would bring him to the sites Dean had checked out earlier in the day, seeing as he'd left the print-outs back in the car. The combination of 'Stanford', 'experiment', and 'phobia' brought him to a small blip on the Psychology departmental website, where he found the name James Bradley, and he followed links until he pulled up more specific information about the study Dean had mentioned, because the connection was there. It had to be.

Surprise did come when Sam realized how quickly he came across the information he was looking for. Dean was maybe not as smart as Sam – not as book smart, at least – but a monkey could navigate the Google search engine. He really _should _have been able to figure it out without so much brotherly aid. And there lay the differences in motivation and priorities Dean had brought up. The quickest and simplest route had meant pawning all the work off on his brother. He had more experience, and was, after all, a dependable asshole.

Sam tapped a pen against his chin and scanned the webpage open on his laptop screen one paragraph at a time. It was filled with big words he wasn't familiar with, and he dug the fingertips of his left hand into his eyes, tired and strained from staring at the bright screen. "Flooding," he read aloud softly, hoping the words would have more meaning if he heard them, "forces a person to experience the feared stimulus and associate the CS with the absence of the UCS…" he trailed off, still completely lost.

This happened to be the exact moment Ben felt the need to act on whatever feelings of guilt or responsibility he was dealing with over this whole situation. _You okay? _popped up in an instant messenger window on his screen. Sam was feeling his own stab of guilt over the way he'd been treating his friend, but there would be plenty of time later to remedy whatever patchy spots the week had created. At the moment, he needed help, and with Dean alone in that building, he wasn't above asking for it. And he had an opportunity to get said help with the possibility of minimal questions attached. He responded to Ben's questions with short answers, and sat back for a moment. Then he typed out, _ever hear of a dr james bradley?_

Turned out to be the best decision he'd made so far. As a psychology major on the campus where the experiments had taken place, yes, Ben knew a lot about one Dr. James Bradley. And, probably due to his guilty conscience, he didn't ask why Sam wanted to know.

And then his phone rang.

* * *

He guessed it was the throaty tickle of breathing in some thirty-odd years of accumulated dust that finally woke him. Seeing absolutely nothing around him but darkness, he played possum and listened for the sound of anything on the prowl, anything waiting to attack him. It was as quiet as it was dark, and Dean moved down to the next item on his mental checklist. Using the gag-worthy pastiness on his tongue, he tried to gauge how long he'd been out. Three minutes of hacking before the air wasn't whistling in through his nostrils, Dean was estimating he'd been out for at least an hour. _Not good. So not good. _

Dean rolled awkwardly onto his back, knocking his left boot into a wall. He lay still for a moment, getting his bearings and taking stock of himself. As far as he could tell, all appendages were still attached and there weren't any memory gaps needing to be filled in, except whatever time he'd missed while he was out. He remembered very clearly, if not a little slowly, kicking Sam out of the building, hearing something downstairs, and then, as his throbbing head could attest to, being hit by a freight train.

Dean put a hand to his aching head and, bracing himself with the other, pulled himself up from the cold concrete underneath him with a groan that cut quickly into a hiss. _Back, back, BACK, you friggin' moron, _his brain screamed at him. He let himself fall back onto his elbows and instantly regretted it as the back of his head smacked a second wall. "Son of a bitch," he spat, recoiling. Apparently, he didn't have a lot of room to work with.

Dean grit his teeth and dragged himself back up onto his hands, the one that had been on his head slipping suspiciously when it made contact with the slick concrete. His arms were shaky with the strain but he stayed relatively upright and remained sitting in the middle of the dark room, not knowing yet how big it was or what might be with him.

As soon as he was slightly more oriented Dean found himself groping around for the shotgun he knew had been in his hand. _Had been. _Coming up empty-handed did wonders for clearing Dean's head. _Gun, gun, know I had a gun. _Dean groped blindly. _I always have a gun._

Finding nothing, Dean didn't panic, instead turning that frustration into some good 'ol passive aggression aimed at the grumpy ghost that had put him here.

"Get ready for round two, bitch," Dean grumbled, moving to get to his feet. His hand accidentally found his flashlight and he eagerly grabbed it up. It clicked hollowly, refusing to produce a light, and he let it drop back to the floor. His back was feeling immensely abused and his bruises had bruises but he managed to stand, huffing out a few curses when it took more effort than he'd like. He absently wiped his hand on his jeans as he moved slowly forward, testing the space in front of him with shuffling steps and an outstretched hand. He bumped the rough wood of the door and slid his hand around until he found the doorknob. Locked. _Wonderful_.

A metaphorical light bulb came on over Dean's head and he dug into his pocket, pulling out his cell phone. The faint light of the screen revealed what was once some sort of storage closet. It was empty now, nothing but a dark smear on the back wall. Dean's hand came back up to the side of his head and he hissed as his palm pressed against the tender cut.

Dean spent a good ten minutes ramming into the solid bulk of the door before he slumped dejectedly against it, holding his shoulder. His hand bumped the lump in pocket from where he'd returned his cell phone and he gave a frustrated grunt. _Dumbass. _He pulled the phone out, willing there to be bars, and was mildly surprised to see he was getting three, even in the basement of this decrepit old hellhole. "Cannot believe I'm doing this," he muttered, punching the keys viciously. It only rang once.

"_What?"_

"I've hit a small snag." Dean didn't beat around it, and certainly wasn't going to waste the time apologizing and all that crap, especially over the phone. Sam was rusty, Sam was different and distant, but he knew the stakes of the job and he knew the risks. Most importantly, he knew Dean, whether either of them wanted to admit it. Sam knew Dean would only be calling him right now if he had no other options.

_"I thought you said you don't need me to do this. No, wait, you said I COULDN'T do this." _Thatdidn't mean he wasn't going to give Dean shit for it, though.

"Technically, I said _you _thought you couldn't do this."

Sam sighed and grumbled a couple of choice curses, but Dean heard the rustle of him getting up and moving. _"Where are you?"_

"I don't know. Well, a closet."

There was a pause. _"I'll bypass all of the obvious jokes."_

"That would be appreciated," Dean gritted out.

"_Why are you in a closet?"_

"It's not like I was looking for a place to hang my coat," Dean snapped. "I was checking out a noise and got sidelined."

_"Ghost?"_

"Looks like."

_"So I was right." _Dean could HEAR Sam's smugness. _"And, more importantly, you were wrong."_

Dean rolled his eyes. "Sure."

_"Say I was right."_

"Fine! You were right. Now get me the hell out of here. I can't get the door open."

_"Where is this closet?"_

If Sam was laughing, Dean was gonna kill him. "I don't know. Down a hallway."

_"That's very helpful, thank you."_

"Well, I do what I can." Dean jerked his head and leaned more heavily against the wall, hearing the _click _of a closing door on the other end of the line. "Get a move on. It's fucking creepy in here." Sam's apartment was close to campus but Dean wasn't really looking forward to waiting around for a rescue. Something in his voice seemed to give Sam pause, which was unnerving.

"_Dean, I think I figured it out, what this guy's doing. You've got to clear your mind, okay? Don't think about anything that scares you."_

"Nothing scares me."

_"Dean."_

"Fine. Clear mind, I get it. Get your ass over here. I don't like small spaces." Dean put a hand to his head, prodding the tender area at his hairline. He smeared the blood on his fingertips and grimaced.

Sam sucked in an impatient breath. _"And don't you think that might be the exact reason you're stuck there?"_

The implications of something – or some _thing _– knowing what was going on in his head made Dean all the more uneasy, and he shifted uncomfortably against the wall, trying to keep it out of his voice. "If that's the case, this is one sorry ass ghost, because I don't think the closet's gonna kill me."

_"I'd be more worried about what might be in the closet with you."_

"Thank you for that, really." Dean inched closer to the door and struck out, pounding it with a fist.

_"Don't get scared."_

"What am I, six years old? I'm not scared."

There was a chuckle in Sam's voice, but it was laced with an honest worry. _"You sound a little scared."_

"Just get your ass over here and let me out."

_"I'm coming. Just…think about things that don't scare you."_

"What do you think I'm doing?"

_"I think you're getting scared. Calm down." _Sam's breathing quickened, and Dean assumed he had started running, also not doing anything to diminish his worry.

"You calm down," Dean muttered, sliding down the door to sit against it. _Ponies_, he told himself. _Drew Barrymore. Jack Daniels. Miniature golf._

_"You thinking about happy things?"_

"Yeah, I'm thinking about you getting smoked by a dump truck on your way here." _Oh, shit. Not really. Happy thoughts, happy thoughts. Bacon. Cookies. Bacon cookies. Really big – _

_"That's not funny."_

"Relax, Samantha, I already took it back." Dean took a breath and squinted into the four feet of empty space in front of him, wary of shapes and shadows he couldn't actually see. He put the phone on speaker and held it away from his ear, far enough to use the screen's light to brighten the corners of the closet but close enough to hear Sam when something struck him. "Hey, wait. Why am I sitting here thinking happy thoughts?" From the other end of the line he heard the rustle of leaves and a thump that was both metallic and dull. "What was that?"

Sam ignored one question. _"People's fears are being manifested."_

_Duh. _"We knew that." …_Right?_

_"Hang on. I'm outside the building."_

"Can you get in?" Dean demanded, bracing a hand against the wall and pulling himself back to his feet. He put the phone back to his ear.

_"Yeah. Hold on a sec." _There was a _clack_ as Sam presumably set the phone down on a ledge. Given Sam's grunt, he then hoisted himself through the same window they'd already unblocked. Dean heard a faint scrape as he reached out to retrieve the phone. _"I'm in."_

Dean let out a breath, but Sam didn't seem to have heard, as he continued. _"I was right when I said something bad happened here. You remember that professor you mentioned?" _

"Brady? The old stuffy one?"

"_Bradley. Well, I looked further into that, and – "_

"Why?"

_"Why what?"_

"Why'd you look further into – "

Sam exhaled loudly. _"Look, Dean. Maybe take care of the undead murderous professor now and have this discussion later?"_

Dean blinked. "Undead murderous professor. Is that the official term?"

_"Or something like that."_ Sam was quiet for a moment. _"Left or right at the main staircase?"_

"Left."

"'_Kay. He did experimental research with phobias, like you said. Specifically, with a technique called flooding, something people had been experimenting with since 1959."_

Dean was struck with a sudden mix of awe and cool disgust. "You geeked all this in the time you – "

Sam continued loudly, cutting Dean off. _"Flooding forces a person to experience what they fear without being able to escape it. He experimented with students."_

"So they were volunteers." _Serves 'em right, the damn fools,_ Dean thought.

As if he could read Dean's thoughts, Sam was right there, playing DA for the students. _"Yeah, but I don't think that made their fears any less important to them."_

"Good call."

"_They just wanted to stop being afraid, they didn't know what they were signing up for."_

His words were coming across with a strange, muted echo, and Dean rolled his eyes. "Are you on the other side of the door?"

_"I don't…yeah, there's a door here. Is this you?"_

"Yeah, I can hear you." He thought about ridiculous it was that they were talking on the phone while standing on either side of the door. "And this seems kinda lame and teenage girl-like now, so..." Dean snapped his phone shut and shouted through the door. "Kinda got stuck."

The knob rattled and much to Dean's surprise, the door swung open to reveal an amused, wide-eyed Sam, armed with only a phone and a flashlight. Dean huffed and jerked at the collar of his jacket. "It wouldn't open."

"I just opened it." Sam smiled and help up a hand. "This yours?"

Dean took the gun back. "Oh, I feel better already."

Sam was still smiling. "You really couldn't get the door open?"

Dean was both mildly alarmed and embarrassed by this, but rolled his eyes and shouldered his way out into the hall, bending with a wince to retrieve his own flashlight. He gave it an experimental click and, lo and behold, it worked. _Figures._ "We'll call you the Incredible Hulk, okay? Let's just get out of here."

Sam's smile faded as he grabbed Dean's arm, swinging him around. "What?" Dean asked, yanking his arm away.

Sam gestured at the side of his head. "You've got a little…"

Dean swiped at his own head, adding to the bloody smears already on his hand and quickly transferring it to the bloody smears already on his jeans. "It's nothing. Let's get out of here."

"Huh."

"Huh, what?"

Sam was deep in thought mode, walking slowing back and forth in front of the door, running fingers along the dusty edges. "It wouldn't let you out. Why'd it let me back in?"

This earned Sam yet another eye roll as Dean attempted to hurry the process along. "It's not a fucking haunted _door_, Sam." _It's probably not a haunted door. _There was no response, and Dean sighed impatiently. Everything inside of him wanted to get the hell out of there, because Sam was obviously right, and something very bad had happened there. Of course, he wasn't going to pat him on the back, so he kept up the jackass thing while inching away from the closet door and hoping Sam would take the hint. "Well, it feeds on fear, right? Maybe it wanted you back in. You are a pretty big sissy."

"And you're so hilarious I just pulled a muscle laughing," Sam snapped, getting up from where he'd been crouching to examine the door's hinges.

"Okaaaaay. I'm gonna chock that little outburst up to raging teenage hormones."

"I'm twenty years old."

Dean only vaguely heard Sam's whining, because his phone started ringing.

* * *

Sam gaped up at his brother, only to see he didn't have even an ounce of Dean's attention. He was instead staring at his dark and silent cell phone and Sam wondered if Dean's little stint in the closet had truly gone and caused him to lose his mind. "Dean?"

"It's Dad," Dean said, pressing a button and returning the phone to his pocket. He offered Sam a crooked smile. "No big deal."

Sam was almost certain the phone hadn't rang, but he gave Dean the benefit of the doubt and silently followed him as he jerked his head and started down the hall. He wasn't sure if his brother was leading the way out of the building or if they were going to wander aimlessly until a plan materialized in Dean's head. He had a feeling it was going to be the latter. "The experiments?" he started, keeping within an arm's reach. "Bradley basically forced his volunteers to face their fears head-on, no way to escape the situation. It'd been done before; he just tended to take it a little too far. Like you said before, intense."

"So why's he haunting this place? You said there were no major accidents or deaths."

"No, but according to you, he was really invested in his work. Maybe so invested he couldn't move on."

Dean nodded slowly. "You said he died where?"

"Connecticut."

"Buried there?"

"Family plot," Sam confirmed.

"Then if it's really him haunting the place, his spirit is connected to something in the building."

Dean looked disappointed, and Sam could understand why. He was feeling an uneasiness in this building, too, and Dean looked like he really wanted to get the hell of there. "'Something?'" Sam nodded. "That's specific."

"He's gotta have an office around here someplace, chock full of little professor-y knick-knacks to cling to," Dean said, taking a step backwards. He gestured with his flashlight, all of his body language saying, 'let's get a move on.' "You go that way. Watch out for ghosts."

"Thanks for that."

Dean shrugged and turned, disappearing around a corner, not-so-subtley digging for his cell phone.

Sam frowned but kept his focus. _One problem at a time. _He climbed the staircase and wandered the third floor halls for about fifteen minutes, peeking into abandoned classrooms, but he didn't find more than empty desks and, well, dust. "There has got to be an easier way to do this," he muttered. _Ben. _Of course. The guy knew just about everything, it seemed. He answered on the third ring.

"_Mmm?"_

Sam winced. "Oh, shit, were you sleeping?"

_"Sam? What the – what time is it?"_

"It's not that…" Sam checked his watch and his eyes widened. "Okay, I guess it is that late."

_"Where are you?"_

"I'm…uh, you remember that professor I asked you about, Bradley?"

Ben didn't speak for almost a minute; Sam knew because he counted off each second in his head. _"What the hell is going on, man? Why are you asking me so many questions about this guy? And why are you asking me at…two thirteen in the morning." _He did not sound happy.

"Psych paper." Sam cringed at how stupid that sounded, even to his own ears.

_"But you're not taking any psychology classes this semester."_

"It's not…my psych paper," Sam finished lamely.

_"What?"_

"Just…I'll explain everything…later. I need to know about Bradley's possessions. Do you know if they're still anywhere on campus?"

_"You need to know about this NOW?" _Ben demanded around a yawn.

Sam rubbed his forehead. "This is really important, Ben. I'll explain everything in the morning, I swear to God."

Ben took a breath. _"Um." _Sam heard a click; Ben turning on the light. _"He didn't leave the university under the best of circumstances. I remember reading that he didn't take anything back to Connecticut with him. Left all of his notes and everything in the building. I think they put everything in the basement."_

"In this building?" Sam asked before he thought about what he was saying.

_"What the – what building? Where are you?"_

"Is everything in Maxwell?" he tried to amend.

Ben sighed. _"Yeah, should be."_

"Thanks, Ben."

_"Dude. You owe me one hell of an explanation in the morning, Sam. And breakfast. And a shit-ton of coffee."_

"You got it." Sam couldn't even begin to think about what he was going to say to Ben in the morning.

* * *

"_Boy, you'd better HOPE you can't get to the phone because if you're deliberately ignoring – "_

Dean snapped the phone shut, unable to listen to the rest of his dad's message. He couldn't help feeling a bit queasy; John Winchester didn't leave messages. He didn't call unless he had something to say and you'd better pick up when the phone rang.

Thank God for adrenaline, because that was keeping Dean going. His back was an amusement park of OW. He couldn't move an arm without a spike of pain drilling through his shoulder and all the way to his spine. His head was throbbing, but not nearly as bad as it should have been. God, he wanted to sleep for a week. Had to take care of this ghost, first.

Dean rotated his jaw, resulting in an uncomfortable pull of the short hairs above his right ear, coated in blood and pasted to his head, and tried to focus on the task at hand. The building seemed to be a dozen times larger inside than it had appeared from outside. He felt as though he'd been up and down these hallways a dozen times, and wasn't getting anywhere. "Don't think I've ever freakin' wanted a ghost to just come to me," he muttered.

The sudden, but right on cue, ring of his cell phone caused Dean to jump. He immediately whipped open the phone. "Jesus Christ, Sam!"

Sam didn't even acknowledge him. _"It's all here."_

Dean put a hand over his eyes and leaned against the wall. "What's all here?"

"_Bradley's stuff."_

"That's convenient."

"_Ben says anything of Bradley's left in the building was stored in the basement."_

Dean pushed up from the wall, feeling a pit grow in his stomach. He _knew _he'd seen something downstairs. "I have a pretty good idea where that is."

Sam paused. "_Be_ _careful_."

"You be careful."

"_Wait_ _for_ _me_."

"Yeah." Dean snapped the phone shut, no intention of waiting for Sam. With a determined pace, he returned down the hall he'd just come from, stuffing his phone into his jacket pocket. _We've got you, you son of a bitch._

He jogged the last few steps down the corridor, pausing cautiously about a foot from the closet door he'd found himself trapped behind. He'd been stopped from moving past this point before, and now knew why. He was poised to be ready for it to happen again.

Dean took slower steps now, moving the beam of his flashlight to encompass as much of the hallway as was possible. He swallowed, on edge, and nearly jumped clear out of his skin when he caught movement at the end of the hall out of the corner of his eye.

"Dammit, Sam," he gritted out, shaking his head and jerking his flashlight angrily. Sam's lanky frame was leaning against the far wall, next to the door Dean was positive led to the basement. "What?" Dean had his arms out, stalking towards his brother. "I gotta wait for you, but you can just wander down here all by…"

That was when Dean felt that something was very wrong. As he moved closer to Sam, he realized his little brother wasn't leaning against the wall, he was slumped against it, face pale and eyes closed.

"Hey, Sam," Dean said, closing the final distance in a few long strides. He reached out and gripped Sam's sweatshirt at the shoulder, letting his shotgun fall with a muted clatter. "Sammy." His voice was shaky, and Sam was limp in his grip. Dean released his hold and Sam fell over the rest of the way, hitting the floor with a thud.

"Sammy," Dean said again, forcefully. His flashlight dropped from his suddenly sweaty palm as both hands pawed at his brother, pulling him up. There was still no response, and there was no use.

Sammy was still and cold.

* * *

To be continued...


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter Eight

_I'd take our family over normal any day."_

_Saturday, in the wee morning hours_

He knew there wasn't a chance in hell Dean was going to wait for him. In twenty years, Sam hadn't ever been able to get Dean to do what he wanted, not to mention what was SMART. Maybe if he threw in some sad puppy eyes, and even if he was willing to stoop that low – and he was decidedly NOT – Sam didn't think it would help at this point. He was two years removed from being the little brother that left Dean behind, the one that may actually have been able to get Dean to listen. He figured the little brother he was now wasn't going to get much from him.

Sam took the stairs two at a time, figuring Dean was already in the basement. Hand on the banister at the second-floor landing, he rounded the corner and stopped so quickly he nearly overbalanced and went headfirst down the stairwell.

From the look of things, he wouldn't have been first one.

For the second time in as many days, Sam's entire world narrowed to the image of his brother sprawled and unmoving, looking much too like a broken puppet that'd had its strings cut. And for the second time, Sam rushed clumsily to Dean's side, nearly tripping in his haste and thudding ungracefully to his knees. But this time, it WAS blood, not water, pooling under his brother's body, soaking the knees of his jeans.

"Dean," Sam choked out, pressing two fingers to the side of Dean's neck. Nothing. Desperate, he gripped Dean's wrist with his other hand. Still nothing. The blood under his knees was warm, but Dean's skin was shockingly cold. His eyes were dark and glassy, open without seeing even with Sam right in his face. _No, no, no no no no nonononono, _was all that was running through Sam's head. He'd just been talking to him.

Shock, sadness, and something unfamiliar and vicious brought Sam near tears as he grabbed Dean's shoulders and shook him hard. _Not now, not like this, you stupid, stubborn asshole. _He shook Dean until he was shaking, himself and then Sam sat back hard, his spine connecting painfully with the railing. His foot shot out from under him, giving Dean an unintended nudge. His body shifted, and that's when Sam saw a bit of thin knotted string peeking out from underneath the cuff of Dean's jacket sleeve. He reached out and pulled up the sleeve, revealing a brown string bracelet on Dean's wrist. The same bracelet Sam had found on the floor in his living room just hours earlier. The one that was supposed to be on his bedside table right now. _Wha – _

Confused, in shock, and barely able to breathe, Sam swallowed hard and put his hand on Dean's wrist. He still didn't feel alive, lacking both warmth and a pulse, but he certainly felt real.

"You made them face their worst fears," Sam muttered. He dug out his cell phone, relieved to have a signal, hoping for this theory of his to pan out. "Please, please, please," he whispered as the phone rang. The line was picked up quickly, but Sam didn't hear anything but breathing on the other end. His fingers tightened around the plastic casing. "Dean?"

There was a hitch in the breathing. _"Sammy?" _The single word was barely more than a strangled sound in Dean's voice.

"Oh, thank God, you're okay." Sam let out a breath and pulled himself to his feet, carefully avoiding looking at the dead body of his brother stretched out at his feet.

_"Yeah." _Dean spoke slowly. _"Yeah…you, too."_

"I think it's safe to say Bradley's screwing with us."

Dean barked a laugh. _"Yeah, I'd say so."_

Sam frowned. Something was definitely off in Dean's voice, and he had a pretty good guess what it might have been. "What did you see?"

_"Doesn't matter. I'm by the closet where you found me."_

"I'm on my way." Sam was already moving and he all but sprinted to the spot, finding Dean standing in front of the closet door. He was obviously tense, shifting his weight and shooting glances down the hall opposite Sam's direction.

"Hey." Sam made his presence known while still a good distance away, because Dean just looked THAT jumpy.

Dean's eyes seemed to triple in size. "Sam." He made like he was going to move towards Sam but stopped.

"Are you okay? Really, Dean. What did you see?"

That rare vulnerability he had seen in his brother vanished before his eyes. Dean straightened and shifted out of the beam from Sam's flashlight. He started spinning in a circle with a frown on his face. "What?" Sam asked, worried what Dean might be seeing now.

"Where the hell's my gun?"

"Huh?"

"My fucking gun!" Dean stormed down the hallway and back, retracing his steps as if the shotgun was stuck in a crack in the linoleum.

"I didn't see it, Dean."

"I HAD it."

"I know you HAD it, but I'm not seeing it now." Feeling mildly pathetic, Sam could do nothing but stand by while Dean stomped around a little longer.

Pissed but satisfied the gun was nowhere to be found Dean struck out and slammed his flashlight against the wall. Somehow, the light survived. "Let's get this over with." He turned and moved determinedly towards the door at the end of the hall. "I have officially had it with the good professor."

* * *

Dean didn't know what it specifically was he wanted from the car, but he was sure he would have felt a whole hell of a lot better than he currently did if he could just make to the Impala. Which he couldn't. Dean punctuated his frustration with a pair of slammed fists against the solid stone that should have been the broken boards covering the window that had served as their point of ingress. And shouldhave also been their way out. It wasn't only that window, but every window and door – every possible way out of the building seemed to have been magically sealed shut after Sam was back inside. Which was a bit problematic.

"What do you have in the car?" Sam asked.

Dean shrugged. "The basics." This did nothing to satisfy Sam's curiosity, and he was forced to elaborate. "Enough lighter fluid to barbeque a decent-sized cemetery. Stick or two of dynamite. Maybe some C-4."

Sam gaped. "Dynamite? C-4? What the hell, Dean?"

"I said, 'maybe.'"

"How the hell did you get C-4?"

"I dunno," Dean said with another shrug. "I might have found it lying around…in a military warehouse."

"What – "

"Two years, Sam," Dean snapped. "This whole thing would be so much easier if you could just accept that."

Sam visibly recoiled, but Dean felt no remorse. "Regardless. We are not blowing up this building."

"Suit yourself. It's gonna make taking care of this little problem a lot harder and slower." He stalked off in the direction of the basement.

The basement was locked, which didn't exactly come as a shock to either one of them. Dean fingered the heavy padlock, wishing he had that fucking gun; he'd blast the ever-loving shit out of that lock. Just who the hell did this ghost think he was? He thought longingly about the freakin' ARMORY out there in the car. "You have anything to pick this with?"

"Oh, sure." Always the helpful little prick, Sam made a show of patting down his pockets. "Um…no. No, can't say that I do."

Dean rotated his head to look up at his brother. "A simple 'no' works just fine."

Sam smiled tightly. "No."

"Thank you." Dean sighed and started digging through his own pockets. _Lighter, gum…money? Phone number. _"I might have…Ha!" Victorious, he pulled a safety pin from his inside jacket pocket.

"Hope that's good enough."

Dean couldn't help thinking maybe Sam meant, _hope YOU'RE good enough. _"Yeah, well." At the same time, maybe Sam wasn't the only Winchester off his game. Lost the gun, no lock pick…Dad would have had a field day. Dean hesitated, thinking back to the phone call and then the sight of Sammy's lifeless body. Maybe the message wasn't as real as he'd thought it was. _You sneaky little son of a – _

"I'm kinda surprised we've gotten this far."

Dean snapped out of it. _Not all of us,_ he amended silently, thinking of his gun. He didn't look up from his task. "Yeah, I know what you mean."

"Bradley obviously knows what we're planning, or at least that we're planning something – but instead of stopping us, he just sealed us inside the building."

"Yes."

"Why not just kill us?"

"Sam, could you please not give the ghost any ideas?"

"I'm just saying – "

"And I hear you. But right now, I'd like to focus on the job – " Dean grunted and gave the lock a tug, pulling it loose with a faint _click _– "at hand." He sat back on his heels and tossed the lock up to Sam. "No more killing talk, deal?" The image of Sam's dead body was still very much fresh in his mind, despite the fact it no longer appeared to be lying at the end of the hall.

His tone must have conveyed his seriousness, because Sam nodded solemnly. "Okay."

"Okay." Dean stood, jerking the door open.

A strong scent wafted up from below; something stale and old and even harder to handle than the atmosphere they'd been subjected to thus far. Dean wrinkled his nose against the stench.

"Better than a decomposing body," Sam said, holding a hand over his own nose and mouth.

Dean raised his eyebrows in agreement. Not taking any chances, he descended a single step and jumped up and down a few times. Behind him, Sam leaned against the door, holding it open. The old wood creaked but held, and Dean next grabbed hold of the questionable-looking railing and gave it a rough shake. Momentarily satisfied they weren't going to fall through the stairs and plummet twenty or so feet to a sudden and painful stop against the concrete below – because that would just be redundant at this point – he motioned Sam forward with a jerk of his head and started down.

The door slammed shut as soon as Sam pulled away from it. He jiggled the knob. "Um…Dean."

_Should've seen that coming. _Dean rolled his eyes. "Just think of it this way: we take care of this ghost and a locked door won't matter." He thought a moment and added quietly, "And if we don't take care of this ghost, a locked door won't really matter." To Sam, "You have any idea what exactly we're looking for?"

"Ben just said that they moved everything left in Bradley's lab and office down to the basement."

"That kid is one giant geek." Dean used his flashlight to guide each careful step on the staircase. Every rotted step seemed to creak just a little more than the previous and every sound was magnified, bouncing off the solid walls surrounding them. As soon as his boot hit the floor, Dean's flashlight winked out. The next second they were plunged into total darkness as Sam lost his light.

Sam sighed and threw his useless light to the floor, where it landed with a thunk. "You're not still afraid of the dark, are you?" he asked, not kindly.

Even though he was barely able to see Sam, Dean glared, hitting his light against the flat of his palm. _Come on, you stupid piece of…_ "I've never been afraid of the dark." Sam returned the glare until Dean averted his eyes. "No," he admitted. "Are you kidding me? Not since I was seven." He smirked. Two could play that game. "You still afraid of Barney?"

"Oh, you're gonna go there?"

"You were _nine._"

Suddenly the bulb of Dean's flashlight popped and the small beam hit Sam flush in the eyes. Dean grinned as Sam flinched away. "See? Told ya."

Sam knocked Dean's arm out of the way and retrieved his own flashlight from the floor. "So what's the plan?"

Dean shrugged. "Find Bradley's shit. Burn the hell out of it. Beers on me."

Sam huffed, and Dean decided it was about time to start taking count. "Whatever," he mumbled in his very special mumbly-Sam way. He pointed to the farthest corner with his light. "You go that way, I'll go this way."

Dean mock-saluted. "Aye, aye." He was almost positive Sam huffed AGAIN as he stalked to a row of stacked boxes off to their right. He watched his brother walk away, not understanding him anymore than he had two years ago. Only moments earlier he'd approached Dean with such caution, what had seemed like genuine concern. And now Huffy McPanties-in-a-Twist was being the same little bitch he'd always been. The kid had mood swings like a fifteen-year-old girl. _Whatever_, he echoed Sam silently.

As directed, Dean took the left. At first glance it was pretty obvious this little endeavor was going to be much more complicated than he would have hoped. "Find Bradley's shit" might have seemed to be a pretty easy task but in actuality, well…there was a LOT of shit in that basement and it would take more time than they had to sift through it all.

"Basements are awesome." Dean was muttering to himself as he moved through the piles and piles and PILES of crap. Crap on top of crap. Crap underneath crap. "Nothing better than a dark, cold, dusty basement. Filled with dusty old crap." Dean picked up a large book from a table and made a face. He wiped his hand on his jeans. _Nasty._

"Are you talking to yourself?"

Dean sighed. "No, I'm talking to all of this crap. What are we looking for? It could be a fucking paperweight for all we know." He slammed the book onto the table and it shook with the force.

"You think it's a paperweight?"

Dean narrowed his eyes at Sam, quite a feat considering he could barely make out his shadow across the room. _What the fuck is wrong with you?_

Getting the message, Sam averted his eyes and turned back to his side of the basement. After a moment he turned back. "Should I look for a – "

Dean dropped another stack of heavy books and threw up his hands. _Fuck it. _"I'm burning all of it."

"But – "

"All of it." Dean swung the beam of his flashlight around, purposefully pausing long enough to get a kick out of momentarily blinding Sam.

"Dean!" he exclaimed, annoyed. It was basically whining, and Dean smirked. He found what he was looking for, though, behind Sam's head: a stack of perfectly flammable cardboard boxes. _Yahtzee. _

Sam followed Dean's gaze and movement as he crossed the basement to the boxes. "Dean, I really don't think we should do this."

"Then I'll do it and you can watch." Dean tossed the flashlight to Sam, who caught it clumsily, barely hanging onto his own. His mouth was open, a million excuses predictably building up and just itching to bubble over. Dean shook his head. "You're welcome to wait outside. Oh, wait, that's right. We can't get outside."

Sam huffed right on cue. "Okay, you've made your point. I just don't think we need to take down the entire building."

Not wasting another moment on pointless arguing, Dean yanked at the box in the middle of the stack and tried to quickly shove what he had together to make a larger pile. Sam was doing what Sam did best: hovering over Dean's shoulder. "What can I do to help?"

Dean laughed, swinging a box around so it was kissing an old wooden desk – perfect kindling – on his right. He tore open the flaps of the box, wincing as the act released a veritable dust bunny attack, and laid them out so the cardboard was overlapping the wood of the desk. "Just don't think about anything you're scared of, okay?"

Sam was fidgeting behind Dean; he could sense it. "What?" Dean asked without looking up from his work. _I do not have time for your shit, Sammy._

"Well, it's just…" Sam suddenly appeared in front of Dean, on the other side of his growing pile. "You can't really tell me not to think about something and expect me not to think about it."

Dean stared at Sam. "What?" Sam's eyebrows did a nervous little dance. Before he had a chance to say something even more stupid Dean reached out and smacked his little brother in the side of the head. "Knock it off."

"OW." Sam glared, but it seemed to work, because nothing spooky came crawling out of the shadows.

Dean waved Sam away. "Go find me some more crap to burn."

Rubbing at the side of his head, Sam started to walk away before stopping abruptly. "Can we not do this?"

Dean stared blankly. He really was good at putting on that dumb face when he wanted to. "This…what?"

"THIS. This same damn thing, over and over and – acting like…you know what?" Sam took a breath and smiled tightly. "Forget it. I give it forty-five minutes. We set fire to this historic building on this very populated and respected campus and you'll be on your way. Finally," he added under his breath. Under his breath, but just loud enough to be heard, which Dean assumed was the point.

He didn't retort, didn't give Sam the satisfaction. He just let Sam pout in the corner, daydreaming about how wonderful and perfect his life had been only one week before.

Dean had been doing this long enough, he could sense there was something with him before he could hear or see anything. His head came up, right hand instinctively groping the desk in front of him, reaching for the gun he didn't have. So he was pretty damn surprised when his fingers touched the cool metal of his shotgun's barrel. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, even when said gift horse was probably trying to kill him, he brought up the gun.

It seemed quieter all of a sudden; no sounds of rummaging from Sam's direction. Dean could only hear his own breathing, which sounded embarrassingly loud to his own ears. He couldn't see anything, but that didn't mean there was nothing there. Dean heard the footsteps before he saw the large form emerge from the shadows in front of him. "Dad?" he managed.

The face was definitely John Winchester's but there was something wrong, something in the eyes. "You think I didn't know what you were up to, boy?" Something cruel in the voice. "You think I'm stupid?"

Dean forced a hoarse laugh. "I get it. You're not him. You're not my dad." He couldn't believe he'd fallen for it, even for half a second.

This John laughed, too. His eyes were dark. "Don't be so sure." He cocked his head. "You're not sure, are you?"

"Sure enough to do this." Dean hefted his shotgun, palms sweaty as he aimed at his father, whether it was really him or not. _Definitely not._

"You gonna shoot me, Dean? Shoot your own father after everything I've done for you? You ungrateful little son of a –"

He lunged, and Dean didn't hesitate to pull the trigger.

* * *

Sam heard the shot from the other side of the basement and raised the flashlight in his hand like a weapon. It was more instinct than anything, because he really didn't think of a Maglite as much of a weapon. Really, the only thing he was thinking was, _where the hell did Dean get a gun?_ "Dean?"

When Dean didn't answer Sam gave a stack of boxes a harsh kick to clear a path and froze in his tracks as a creepy, utterly disturbing laugh trickled through the air. The hairs on the back of his neck stood straight up and Sam turned slowly, prepared to use that friggin' flashlight however he needed to.

Sam was eleven when Dean had made him watch _It_ as part of his newest way to cope with being stuck with babysitting detail – coming up with ways to scare the shit out of Sam. This activity provided him a valid reason, in Dean's eyes, to ignore his algebra homework. It wasn't that fifteen-year-old Dean didn't love his little brother; of course, he did. It was the combination of cabin fever and teenage boy-osity that drove him to torment Sam.

_It_ was Sam's first scary movie, and mission very much accomplished. The first time Sam squashed his face into a pillow Dean laughed and turned the volume up. The second time, he took the pillow away. Dean thought it was a riot, until it was an hour after the movie had ended and Sam was still freaking out, jumping as a car backfired in the parking lot and at the sight of his own red sweatshirt slung over the back of a chair. He seemed to sense, and rightfully so, Dad wouldn't find the whole scaring-the-piss-out-of-Sammy thing quite as funny as he did.

"Dude, it's just a movie. Pennywise isn't real, he's just an actor wearing some really creepy makeup." Dean snapped his fingers. "He was in 'Home Alone 2.' You liked that movie, remember?"

Sam remembered. He also made Dean walk the fourteen blocks to the video store to rent the tape. And that was the only reason he was able to sleep that night, knowing the clown was just Tim Curry in some really creepy makeup. That and Dean's promise to give him whatever he wanted as long as he didn't act scared when Dad got home.

A single red balloon floated out from behind a rusted file cabinet. Sam's stomach dropped, and he stared as it came closer, jumping nearly out of his skin when it popped a foot or so from his face. He knew Bradley was screwing with him – he KNEW it – and yet he couldn't help feeing scared and uneasy. Brandon Perry had died because of his fears, and Sam had nothing with which to defend himself.

And then there he was. Red nose, red hair, creepy white bald head. His mouth opened in an impossibly wide grin. "_Beep_ _beep_, _Sammy_," he said, and Sam seriously considered throwing the flashlight at him. "_They_ _all_ _float_ _down_ _here_." And then his face exploded.

Sam flinched away and when he looked up Dean was standing there, shotgun raised, expression unreadable.

_That's right, Dean_, Sam thought resentfully. _Thanks for scarring your little brother for life._ He swallowed. "Where'd you get the gun?"

Dean shrugged. He leaned the shotgun lazily against his shoulder, but everything else about his body language was tense, a coiled spring ready to snap. "You about ready to get the hell out of here?"

Dean had handed the shotgun over to Sam, who now stood watch while he pulled wads of newspaper out of boxes. The fragile items the paper was packing tickled and crashed against each other as Dean yanked it out without really giving a shit about what was breaking. After he had a decent pile he pulled out his lighter and held the small flame over his intended target – the desk – but paused. He caught movement out of the corner of his eye, somewhere over Sam's shoulder. He could barely make out what he was looking at, but once he could, he couldn't believe his eyes.

Sam shifted his weight. "Quit screwing around Dean. If you're gonna light that thing, will you just do it and get it over with?" When Dean didn't reply Sam turned, all those unwanted, eternally bitched-about instincts causing him to grip the gun tighter as he saw what Dean was seeing.

The form was blinking in and out, clearly the professor type. The elbow pads on the tweed jacket kind of gave it away. The man was sixty-ish, gray hair and salt and pepper beard. Plaid collared shirt with a dark sweater vest over it and that tweed coat over that. With elbow pads. Dean had to stifle a laugh. The professor was much less solid than anything else they'd encountered, and he knew they'd hit paydirt. _Yahtzee. _Of course, he'd never seen such a harmless-looking ghost in his life. He looked like someone's grandfather, not a murdering spirit.

Sam, apparently, was thinking the same thing. "Should I shoot him?"

Dean tipped his head back. "I dunno. He's not really doing anything."

The professor's mouth widened in an innocent yet creepy grin. _"I can help you." _He took a step forward, and both Winchesters took a step back.

"Okay," Dean amended. "Shoot him."

Sam pulled the trigger. And missed. Badly.

"Are you kidding me!" Dean exclaimed. "If Dad was here, he'd smack the crap out of you!"

"Light your stupid fire, moron!" Sam shouted back.

Dean, caught up in the image of an old, tweedy ghost, had completely forgotten the open lighter he was holding. The ghost seemed to have just figured it out, as well. He breezed past Sam, causing him to shudder. _"I can help you overcome your fears."_

"No, thanks." Dean threw the lighter in the pile.

Nothing happened.

Dean shifted his weight. Sam frowned. Bradley's spirit cocked his head. That creepy grin once again broke the eerie calm of his face.

"Dean?" Sam said out of the side of his mouth, as if the ghost wasn't going to hear him.

"Well, it's not gonna happen right away," Dean whispered back harshly. "We don't know what exactly we're trying to destroy. Just think happy thoughts."

Sam squeezed his eyes shut like a fucking child and Dean could only imagine what he was thinking about. Puppies, kittens, butterflies; a barrage of helpless, harmless baby animals parading through his dingy little head. It seemed to work, though, because nothing came creeping out of the shadows.

The fire cracked, popped, and then started to burn very quickly. Whatever it was they were looking for must have been in one of those desks, because Bradley's ghost started strobing in and out until he winked out completely.

All in all, Dean found it to be somewhat anticlimactic, and they had never really figured out what exactly was keeping the professor tied to Maxwell.

"Could have been a paperweight," Sam said.

"Shut up."

There's a bit of a pyromaniac in everyone, and the both of them stood transfixed by the flames before them. Dean didn't realize he had zoned out until Sam's voice snapped him out of it. "Um, Dean. The, uh, fire."

It then hit him that the skin of his face felt tight and hot. The basement had quite the abundance of dry wooden furniture, most of which was now ablaze all around them. Dean blinked. "Shit."

That pretty much summed it up. Sam took a few steps back and then turned and bolted up the staircase, Dean right on his heels. The locked door at the top of the stairs wasn't quite as locked anymore now that Bradley was gone. Dean had been right. _Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Sammy Boy._ They made it all the way back to the window they'd been using as their access point without any further obstacles. Except, of course, for the ever-spreading fire. Dean gave an inner fist pump when he saw their exit was once again open. They squeezed as quickly as possible through the window, Dean quite literally shoving Sam through.

They sprinted around the building and across the quad. The distant wail of sirens could already be heard, and it was an unspoken certainty they weren't going to make it all the way back to the car without the stray onlooker seeing them very literally running away from the scene of the crime. Sam cut a quick left and Dean was right on his heels as they took quick cover behind a row of bushes nestled up against the tree line.

"Decent cover spot," Dean noted.

"Yeah, I thought so."

Dean glanced over, and caught moonlight reflecting off of something behind Sam. He leaned back, looking around his brother, and snickered, realizing the sounds he had heard over the phone. "You rode a bike here?"

"Shut up."

Dean snickered to himself the entire time the fire trucks were outside Maxwell, until a snort slipped out.

Sam looked at him sideways. "What?"

Dean returned the look, grinning. "Been shooting since you were seven years old and you miss with a shotgun from ten feet?"

* * *

It had been a chilly night, and the morning air still had a bite to it. The breeze rustling the leaves of the trees lining the quad was not gentle, but Sam was warm. His face felt tight and hot, left over from the flames now eating away at the skeleton of Maxwell Hall. And he was pretty sure his eyebrows were singed.

The quad was deserted which, honestly, was a bit surprising, being a college town in the middle of the night on a weekend. On fire. Sam would take it, though. Considering the complete and total act of ARSON they'd just committed he'd rather there wasn't an audience for their getaway. The entire night was really starting to fall into perspective.

The Impala was just where they'd left it, and that seemed very, very far away. Sam tried to pick up the pace, but Dean wasn't having any of it. He, apparently, wanted to savor the feeling. Of being a criminal. _Some things really don't change, _Sam thought bitterly, breaking into an uneasy jog towards the car.

Dean caught up to him, lit up like a Christmas tree. Big ass grin plastered on his face. "That was pretty cool, huh?" He kept bumping Sam with his elbow, and Sam had just about HAD IT.

He stopped dead, letting Dean walk ahead a few paces before realizing Sam had stopped moving. He turned, his face a giant question mark. "No," Sam snapped. "No, Dean. It's not COOL."

Dean rolled his eyes in that way that meant 'untwist your lace panties, Samantha' and it did nothing but further infuriate Sam. "We just destroyed a building, Dean," he whispered harshly. It was ridiculously late – or early, depending on your perspective – but he didn't want to be overheard discussing their recent criminal activity in the middle of campus.

Dean was stone, was steel, and really wasn't having it. "And how many lives do you think we might have saved in the process?"

Sam's jaw was clenched so tightly it hurt. Dean just didn't get it. Never had, never would. _What's the fucking point? _"Just forget it." He shoved past his brother and stalked to the passenger side of the car.

Dean huffed and caught up with him, planting himself firmly in Sam's path. "Forget WHAT? Sam, what's your problem?"

"Nothing, Dean."

Dean's head jerked violently. "Nah, I'm not buying that bull. I mean, yeah, a patented Sam Winchester hissy fit might have been pretty easy to come by a few years ago but I'd like to think you've grown up a little since then – "

"Yeah, I have, Dean. I've grown up. A lot." Dean just stared at him. He had that irritating eyebrows quirked, mouth hanging open, dumbass look on his face. The one he always had when he was trying to make SAM feel like the dumbass. Sam yanked open the car door. "At least that makes one of is."

Dean shook his head. "Nuh uh. Out of my car."

Sam rolled his eyes, one leg already on the way in. "What?"

"I'm not gonna let you PMS all over it."

"You don't know how to have an adult conversation, do you?"

Dean laughed. "This is an adult conversation? Because I feel like I'm talking to a fifteen-year-old girl."

The wail of sirens drew closer, and Sam met Dean's eyes over the top of the car. He sighed. "Can we just finish this at home?" Dean snorted and Sam winced. "Wrong choice of words." He didn't apologize.

"Whatever." Dean practically threw open the driver's side door, the ever-present creak sounding violent.

The drive back to the apartment was tense and silent. Dean had always been a fast, if not reckless, driver, which was a bit of an eyebrow-raiser considering how much he loved the damn thing. _More than people_, Sam thought viciously.

He felt only the smallest stab of guilt over the thought, feeling much more over the emergency response vehicles racing past. It wasn't like Dean had come out to drag him around on a ghost hunt. It had very much been the other way around and Sam really only had himself to blame. And he was very much kicking himself.

Dean slammed the brake pedal to the floor and Sam's knees smacked the dash. He glared at Dean, who only grinned. "Ow," he said pointedly.

Dean yanked the keys from the ignition. "Home sweet home, Princess."

* * *

Sam went into the bathroom. He wasn't yet sure he wasn't going to be sick. He'd been up for…God, he didn't even know long. He couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten and was coming down from a hell of an adrenaline high. He felt beaten and exhausted, staring into the mirror at a Sam that was dirty and pale – a complete stranger. He knew he was supposed to be mad at Dean; he HAD been mad at Dean only moments before. He was just too tired to remember why.

With a scraped and bruised hand Sam scrubbed roughly at his dusty hair and a dirt shower rained onto the counter. He turned the faucet and splashed ice cold water on his face.

When Sam returned to the living room Dean was bent over next to the couch, stuffing shirts and jeans into his duffel. He paused when Sam entered the room but didn't look up. "Thought I'd go ahead and get out of here," he said when Sam didn't speak first. "Get an early start."

Sam opened his mouth, unsure what was going to come out. "You're not gonna try to talk me into coming with you?"

THAT caused Dean to look up. "Why? Did you want me to?"

Sam didn't break eye contact, just lifted a noncommittal shoulder. He wasn't sure if he wanted Dean to, but he'd been expecting him to.

"Or did you just want to tell me 'no?'"

Oh, NOW he remembered why he was mad at Dean. Because Dean was a jerk. An asshole. A brainwashed little soldier.

Dean raised his eyebrows and nodded, and that's when Sam realized he'd said all of that out loud. "And you wanted to know why I wasn't going to ask you to come with?" He didn't rise, dropping a shirt into his bag.

Sam just stared at Dean, and Dean just stared back. "You're wrong," he finally said.

"Okay." Dean went back to packing his bag, wincing when he straightened. He walked stiffly to the bathroom, not making eye contact with Sam as he passed. He didn't comment on Sam's little outburst, didn't strike back.

Listening to the muted sounds of Dean gathering his things, Sam stared at a spot on the wall. Dean was wrong. He was so wrong. Like Sam had nothing better to think about or do with his time. "You're not wrong," he found himself saying.

"I know." Dean brushed past Sam. He finished cramming his duffel and zipped it. He tossed it towards the front door.

Sam had a switch. A switch that up until the moment Dean's bag smacked the linoleum, he'd thought only John Winchester could flip. As it turned out, switch-flipping was a hereditary trait.

Just like that goddamned condescending tone. Like Dean just knew EVERYTHING. What Sam was thinking, what was best for him.

Dean. Didn't. Know. Shit.

Sam swallowed, and it was like trying to swallow a rock into a stomach filled with fire. He hadn't felt this way in two years – the last time he'd seen his father. "What do you mean you KNOW?" he spat, clenching fists at his side.

Dean, clearly oblivious to everything going on inside of Sam, a LAUGH RIOT since he knew everything about everything, dropped to the couch with a sigh, rubbing a sore spot on his shoulder. He looked older, maybe wiser, and much too like their father, and it all made Sam despise him. "Who knows when we're going to see each other again, Sam? I'm too tired to fight with you right now."

_It was later than Sam was supposed to be up on a school night. He was stretched out on his stomach on the floor, government text open in front of him. Dean was passed out on the couch, a square of gauze taped neatly to his forehead, bright red spots of blood just starting to seep through. _

_Sam had stayed behind to do homework, and left his letter from Stanford out on the counter. It'd been burning a hole in his book bag for two weeks, and now seemed as good a time as ever. It was hard to keep his eyes on his textbook, and he risked a glance into the kitchen._

_John held his left arm tight to his side when he poured a drink with his right, staring at the letter the entire time. He carried his glass over to his armchair and sat back with a wince. He looked just worn down enough to give it a shot._

_Sam kept his eyes glued innocently to the same sentence he'd been staring at for ten minutes. "I got accepted to Stanford."_

_John grunted and took a drink._

_"Got a scholarship, actually. That's not exactly an easy thing to do."_

_Another grunt. Dean shifted on the couch. That small move attracted more of John's attention than the biggest news of Sam's life, and it started to fuel the fire. "Are you even listening to me?"_

"_Samuel," John sighed, rubbing his brow. "I'm too tired to fight with you right now."_

_But Sam was young, full of energy, and full of fight._

The images flashed in Sam's mind. "You sound just like Dad."

"Okay, Sam."

"Don't do that!" Sam knew he was all but shouting and he didn't give a crap. "Don't act all high and mighty and above everything. Dad did that. You're just like him, and that's all you've ever wanted. You and Dad. For me to be like the two of you."

Dean put his hand to his head and made a sound that was kind of a laugh, kind of a snarl. "I only ever wanted what was best for you, Sammy. Dad," he continued before Sam could jump in, "only ever wanted what was best for you. For _us._" As if Sam was making it all about himself.

"What? Five schools in three years? Yeah, I don't think so."

Dean stood, hands raised in surrender. "I'm not getting into this with you, Sammy."

"SAM!"

Dean stared, and the camel's back snapped.

"Sam. Not Sammy. Barely a Winchester. Not like you, and definitely not like Dad."

"You done?"

"Why won't you talk to me about this?"

Dean crossed his arms. "Fine. You wanna talk? We'll talk. Why do you hate Dad so much? What is the matter with you?"

Sam barely heard him, caught up in his snowballing thoughts. "What's best for me, Dean? Really? I would think attending a prestigious – that means 'important' – school on a FULL SCHOLARSHIP would be what my family thought was best for me. I was wrong. They didn't want me to go."

"I had sixty-seven goddamn dollars!" Dean exploded. "And I gave you every one of them!"

"You could have given me more than money, Dean."

Dean shook his head, laughing. "Well, I'm sorry, Sam, but I was fresh out of gift baskets."

"Why do you always do that?"

"Do what?"

_Act like a dick. _"Forget it. Just…" Sam wanted to pull his hair out. He didn't know how to make Dean understand that he was different, and wanted different things. He stared at their distorted reflections in the dark screen of the television. "You know how I pay for things, Dean?" he asked finally. "With a credit card that has my name on it." Dean rolled his eyes and Sam continued, hardly pausing for a breath. "My name. Not a dead rock star's."

Dean started to chuckle to himself, but it wasn't an amused laugh; it was the laugh that let you know a hit was coming. "Is that it? Me and Dad, we're not good enough for you?"

"God! It's not about you, Dean! This was never about you!"

Dean took a step forward. "Yes. Yes, it was. It was about me and Dad and how we've never been good enough for you. You've always thought you deserved better than us."

"That's what you think?" Sam took his own step forward.

"That's what I think."

"You wanna know what _I_ think? I think you're just jealous because I had the guts to do what you never could."

Sam was ready when the punch came. He ducked to the right and grabbed Dean's arm. His brother's eyes widened in surprise and Sam smirked.

"Let go of me." Dean's words were like acid.

Sam threw Dean's arm away, taking satisfaction as Dean caught himself on the back on the couch with a wince. Once again, Dean didn't strike back; not with words, not with fists. He only stared at Sam, eyes wide like he didn't think Sam'd had it in him. He was sure in for a surprise. Sam had that, and a whole hell of a lot more where it came from. "You know what I have? For the first time in my life?"

"A Sissies Anonymous support group?"

"Friends," Sam ground out.

Dean snorted. "Oh, fuck you, Sam. You think these people care about you more than me and Dad? They don't even know who you are."

"Who _I _am? Do you even know who _you _are, Dean? Tell me, when you look in the mirror, do you just see Dad? Because that's all I see when I look at you."

"What, you take a couple psych classes and now you think you know all about me? There're things that you can't get from school, and THAT'S what you walked out on."

"Yeah? Well, I'm gonna walk out of this, too. Have a nice life, Dean." He went into his bedroom, slamming the door. Even though he'd thought Dean to be dead only hours before, he didn't care if he never saw his brother again.

* * *

_It's waaaaaay too early for this shit._

As soon as the screaming started – not the most pleasant way to wake up – Ben leaned over and grabbed his CD player and headphones from beside his bed; he'd been prepared for this. He turned to max volume and laid there, letting Pearl Jam's "Ten" drown out the yelling on the other side of the wall. He wasn't even sure they knew he was in the apartment; then again, they probably didn't care. The whole thing lasted about twenty minutes and ended with a couple of pretty spectacularly slammed doors, which he even heard over "Jeremy" cranked up to ten.

What was the cool-off time for something like this? As a fairly obedient only child, the biggest family fight Ben had ever had was with his pet gerbil when he was seven. He considered waiting until morning, since it was very nearly morning already, but Sam was a sulker and a dweller and sitting in his room all night would only make living with him extremely unpleasant for the next few days. Weeks, maybe. He wasn't going to put up with it and let Sam wallow in self-pity or whatever. They weren't chicks.

After another fifteen minutes or so, long enough to finish his CD, Ben found himself squatting next to the front door, making just enough noise to draw attention to himself, and Sam was staring at him. He could feel those steely eyes burning twin holes in his back. Could feel how tight Sam was holding his jaw from the tension in the room.

He swallowed hard but couldn't keep from smiling. He had to smile. It was in the official job description of 'best friend' to lighten this mood that had fallen in the apartment. "Just checking."

Sam asked "Checking what?" but Ben heard what he was really thinking: 'Do I even want to know?'

Ben sat back on his heels, flashing a winning smile behind him to where Sam was standing in the doorway to his bedroom. "The hinges." Sam rolled his eyes but his body language seemed to say, 'let's hear it,' so Ben continued. "Door's been through a lot this week. Just wanted to make sure she's okay."

"She?" Sam raised an eyebrow. He did that so often Ben was beginning to wonder whether it was even voluntary.

Ben shrugged.

"I'm going to bed." Sam turned but paused with his back to Ben, one hand braced on the doorframe.

Ben seized the opportunity. "Where's your brother?" Pulling punches was not his style.

"He, uh, left."

_Yes, thanks. I got that much. _"Just like that?"

Sam turned back and leaned against the frame, crossing his arms with a harsh bark of a laugh. "Yeah. That's…kinda how we do it."

Ben stood, stretching out his back; Sam had sure taken his sweet time coming out to investigate the noises he was making. "You okay?"

. Sam took his sweet time here, too. When he finally answered, though, it seemed to be sincere. "Yeah. Yeah I am."

It might have done to end the conversation there but, you know, no pulling punches. "He just…took off?"

"Yeah."

"He kinda seems like a jackass."

"Yeah." Sam again let out that horrible, almost cruel, laugh. "Yeah, he kinda is."

Sam didn't say anything for a long moment, just stared at a nondescript spot on the carpet, and Ben thought maybe that was all he was going to get tonight. He pushed up from his lazy lean against the front door. "Okay, then. I'm gonna – "

"He just makes me so…mad."

"Yeah." Ben nodded. "Brothers tend to do that." He lifted a shoulder. "Or so I've been told."

"Is that some kind of pointed comment that I should be happy with what I have because at least I have a brother?"

_Whatever you need to hear, man. _"No," Ben said innocently, heading for his room. "Not at all."

Sam shook his head as Ben passed him. "Right."

Ben was the one to pause now, stopping in his own bedroom doorway. "Sam."

"Yeah."

"You know how I promised to hold off on the analysis of the pathetic state of your mental health until after your brother left?"

It might have been a figment of his imagination, but Ben could have sworn Sam cracked a smile. "Can it wait til tomorrow?"

Ben nodded. "Sure. Hey," he added, as Sam started to close the door.

"Yeah?"

"I've got your back."

There was something sad in Sam's eyes as he nodded, shutting the door between them.

Ben sighed, not looking forward to spending all that quality time with Moody, Broody Sam; the Sam he first befriended. _At least he didn't slam it._

* * *

The drive was silent but for the ever-present growl of his baby's engine. No music. He was too angry for music. Music was calming or energizing – and yes, it could be both. Dean wanted to stew and be mad. Thinking about what Sam had said. What Dean himself had said. What the HELL Dean was going to say to his dad to keep from getting his ass handed to him. He was simply moving from between a rock and a hard to between a bigger rock and a harder place. It wasn't like he'd passed out at some chick's apartment and had to catch up with Dad and Sammy three towns over because John had left without him. That had only happened once. Twice. In a year. Something like that had come to be expected of him. Ignoring calls wasn't something Dean ever did, and he really didn't know how his dad was going to react. He only hoped the man was stone-cold sober, otherwise they were both at risk for saying things they couldn't take back and he couldn't go through that twice in one day.

If Dean had learned anything from his week in California it was there were no take-backs when you were a Winchester.

Except the knife. He damn well had taken that back.

Dean drove all day and the next day, not feeling a thing but the anger he was holding onto. He didn't watch the speedometer; hell, he barely watched for road signs. Maybe he sort of hoped he'd miss an exit or take the wrong one. It would be nice to disappear for awhile. But he couldn't. He had responsibilities.

Dean had a knot in his gut, and he identified it as the feeling you get when you've forgotten or lost something but can't put a finger on what it is. He was maybe an hour and a half out when he made this realization, finally snapped, and couldn't take the silence for another second.

With a vicious stab at the radio knobs the sound of static filled the tight space of the car. Dean grunted in frustration and adjusted the dial before finding a classic rock station. "Renegade" was just fading out, "Highway to Hell" faded in, and Dean decided that was enough of the radio.

Five miles outside of Richmond, he pulled over on a small bridge, highway patrol be damned, and tossed his cell phone into a dirty creek. The plastic made a particularly satisfying smack as it hit the water. _Takes care of one problem._

* * *

_Sunday night_

John continued cleaning his gun, didn't even look up when Dean entered the motel room. "'Bout time."

"Yeah." No apologies. No excuses. They were as worthless to John Winchester as light beer.

"Could've used you out there."

_Back at ya. _All of the aches and pains of the past week suddenly came at Dean full-force. He wanted to fall into bed and sleep for a week. Of course, John Winchester was never going to let that happen. After the shit Dean had pulled? They'd be on the road by sunrise tomorrow. Sleep in the car to save money. Be on the move nonstop for days. _Dear old Dad._ Maybe Sam had rubbed off on him a little.

Dean dumped his bag at the foot of the bed not currently occupied by a small weapons cache and moved stiffly and wordlessly to the mini-fridge, pulling out a beer. He leaned back against the counter, holding the cold, unopened bottle to the bruise on the side of his head.

John had yet to look up at him. "Called you a couple of times."

Dean's heart tripped around maniacally while he tried to keep his face cool and easygoing. He forced a yawn – not that hard to do – and lobbied for a little sympathy. "Lost the damn thing."

"At least you didn't let anything happen the car." It was sort of a question and John's eyes flicked up. If he was at all concerned about how utterly crappy Dean undoubtedly looked, he didn't show it. Almost seemed to enjoy it. He held Dean's eyes long enough to secure the yes-the-car-is-fine nod before turning his attention back to the gun. "Trouble?"

"You have no idea."

John's eyebrows went up but his head stayed down. "Did you get it?"

_What? _"Yeah, I got it." Dean popped the top to his beer.

"So it's done?"

"Yeah. It's, uh, it's done." He couldn't even recall what the hell it was he'd told his dad he was doing. _It's so done. _Dean kept his expression blank. He knew his dad wasn't buying what he was selling, but even if he suspected Dean hadn't spent the entirety of the past few days like he said he had, there was no way the man would guess he'd been in California with Sam.

John nodded. Dean took a long, silence-filling drink. The couple in the next room screamed at each other. Dean listened to the muted shouts, unable to speak or move, himself.

John stood abruptly, grabbed his beer bottle from the bedside table, and moved towards the front door. He didn't meet Dean's eyes as he passed. "How's your brother?"

The words were harsh, the tone cold, and Dean's head whipped up of its own volition. John had already left the room, leaving only a slamming door in his wake. The truck rumbled to a start and squealed away from the curb in front of the room.

Dean sank slowly into a chair that creaked when it took on his weight. He stared at the ring of condensation left by his father's bottle.

He just seemed to have that effect on people.

* * *

_Texas, late summer 2001_

It was more or less a quick and easy getaway. Sam didn't have a whole lot of possessions he really called his own. Clothes, some books Dean had given him on random holidays over the past couple of years, and the standard baseball glove that hadn't fit his hand since he was fourteen. He didn't take the glove.

He'd been gone only thirteen hours when he seriously considered going back. Sam was at a bus station outside San Antonio, having already exhausted decent chunk of his dismal money supply – one hundred and seventy-three dollars of his own and the sixty-seven of Dean's – on a taxi ride to get this far, which was pretty fucking stupid on his part. And funny, but not in the 'ha ha' kind of way. Sam was running away to claim a scholarship, something he'd received for being SMART. Or so he'd been led to believe. Here he was, making stupid mistakes, burning through his money and not thinking twice about it because he was running on raw fury. He'd even gone so far as to dump his cell in a trash can before climbing into the cab.

Enough of that fury had dissipated now for Sam to begin to think about what he was doing. He had a quarter burning a hole in his pocket and another forty-five minutes to kill before his bus pulled out. He found himself in a staring contest with the pay phone outside. The pay phone was winning.

What finally drove Sam outside was the combination of the cramp in his butt from sitting in a plastic chair, the overwhelming stench of urine, and that fucking quarter.

Once outside, Sam spent another five minutes staring down the chipped receiver. It wasn't like he OWED anyone a phone call. Certainly, no one deserved a phone call.

"Yo, buddy." The voice came from behind him and Sam turned to see a scrawny, dirty man – quite possibly the source of the urine smell – crowding him from behind. "You gonna use the phone or not?"

Sam then realized there was a short line of people behind Stinky. Apparently, everyone else in the bus station had also thrown out their cell phones and had immediate calls to make. It was pretty much now or never, and 'never' had never seemed like a more appealing prospect. The little man jabbed him in the back and Sam stumbled into the phone, knocking the receiver from the hook. It looked like it was going to be 'now' after all. Sam grabbed the swinging receiver and dug into his pocket for that damned quarter.

"No, Danny, don't put that in your mouth."

Sam paused with the quarter halfway to the coin slot. Across the parking lot a young boy was pulling an even younger boy away from a wad of gum he'd been trying to pull up from the pavement. They were obviously brothers; Big Brother taking care of Little Brother.

Sam watched as Danny's brother held his hand as they followed their parents towards a waiting bus.

"Hey!" Stinky was suddenly right in Sam's face. "Make your fucking call!"

As Sam watched Danny's big brother help him up the steps onto their bus he realized he no longer wanted to make his fucking call. "Here." He pressed the quarter into Stinky's hand. Maybe to make up for the wait, maybe to remove the temptation.

Sam walked towards his bus, not understanding the empty feeling in his gut. After all, he'd gotten what he wanted.

He was out.

* * *

The End. Still, a million thanks to my uberpatient beta Rinne.


End file.
